Off Topic: Screen Captures

[Klaus Nordby]

Al Kolka,

I've got TechSmith's Camtasia - so I'm way ahead of you! :-)

But screenshots should NEVER be saved as JPG - it makes them fuzzy and needlessly large. Screnshots, with flat colors and sharp edges, should ONLY be saved as GIFs.

But as for basic screencapure, the PrntScrn key rules supreme!

K

[alkolka]

The cropping technique detailed by Egg is exactly the one I used in my Visio-to-Xara X via PrntScrn example above. One additional hint, if you set the shape (rectangle or whatever) to partial transparency, you can see your image and size your shape with precision.

[juergen]

Al,

good hint. thanks.

juergen

[tonylondon]

I guess the format of data stored when doing a print screen capture will be windows format - i.e. bmp. While gif will be the normal format for saving user interfaces, other formats may be appropriate when, say, doing a capture of a photo...
Tony
NB printscreen + Xara with combine or photoshop with crop renders most static screen capture programs redundant.

[gwpriester]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> But screenshots should NEVER be saved as JPG - it makes them fuzzy and needlessly large. Screnshots, with flat colors and sharp edges, should ONLY be saved as GIFs.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well yes and no Klaus. If all you are capturing is menus, then I agree with you, you don't need more than 256 colors--16 colors usually works fine.

But if you are capturing a screen with a complex, image, then I find Windows BMP uncompressed is better.

The art director at Communication Arts Magazine tipped me off about Windows BMP files. They are all on Macs and he prefers Windows BMP RGB images to which he can apply the Communication Arts Magazine color profiles.

Gary

Gary Priester

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[alkolka]

Klaus,

I agree with you and Gary in that few, if any, screen shots should be saved to jpeg. I used jpeg format in my post only for its compression and bandwidth kindness on our fourm.

I've never had the opportunity to try Camtasia. How do you like it?

Regarding PrntScrn vs. screen capture tools: When you are doing dozens of screen grabs under deadline pressure, or have very specific input/output requirements, a dedicated tool pays for itself in minutes by eliminating process steps. Does it do a better job than PrntScrn? No, you are perfectly correct. If anyone is curious about this aspect, download the Snagit 5 demo (www.techsmith.com) and play with it. Even if it's not your cup of tea, I think you'll be amazed by its feature set.

Gary,

I'll have to try BMP from my screen shots. I've sort of avoided that format, thinking it too old to be good.

[juergen]

Hypersnap ...

I personally use the old Print button and Xara [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif[/img] but at one customer I use Hypersnap when I do screenshots for documentation. Best I ever saw.

http://www.hyperionics.com/index.html


juergen