Designer: "Paste as new image" and crop questions

[gwideman]

Couple of questions stemming from knowing how to work quickly in Photoimpact (4.x), and now being disoriented in Xara Photo and Graphic Designer.

My basic task: Take screen shots of user interfaces, select a portion which illustrates some feature (or defect), possibly add some graphic markup, then save.

Photoimpact way:
-- Screen grab
-- In Photoimpact, Paste-as-new-image
-- Crop: Drag selection tool, hit Ctrl-R
-- Save image.

With Designer...
-- First off, I can't figure out how to Paste-as-new-image. There's no paste when there's no existing file open. OK, maybe I have to start by pressing "New"?

-- Next, there's no "crop" feature!? Instead there's the "Clip" tool, or apparently more or less equivalent, there's dragging the Enhance (Camera icon) tool. But that doesn't crop.

-- To actually crop, after setting clip boundaries help says I have to use Utilities > Photo optimize, which is bristling with options I don't want, including conversion to a different image type and anti-aliasing. All I want is a literal copy of the existing bitmap, with the extraneous surrounding part discarded.

-- Maybe instead of clip+cropping the part of the image I want, I could copy the clipped part and paste it... but then again I'm stuck because there seems to be no "Paste as new image" option.

So at this point I'm confused. How do I achieve in Designer what used be simply a three-gesture job in Photo-impact. (Paste, drag, Ctrl-R), with guaranteed no molesting of the bitmap?

-- Graham

[angelize]

Hello Graham, I'm using Designer pro but this should be the same for P&GD. First yes start a new document Then ctrl+V to paste double click your image and use the crop(clip) handles to crop. I also often use the photo tools that will be now active on the info bar after double clicking to add a touch of sharpening if it needs it. you can optimize the image if using it on a website or simply export it at the desired resolution (file>export)

[gwideman]

Hello Graham, I'm using Designer pro but this should be the same for P&GD. First yes start a new document Then ctrl+V to paste double click your image and use the crop(clip) handles to crop. I also often use the photo tools that will be now active on the info bar after double clicking to add a touch of sharpening if it needs it. you can optimize the image if using it on a website or simply export it at the desired resolution (file>export)

But as I said,
a) I want to end up with the image cropped, not just with a clipping window.
b) I want absolutely no sharpening, resampling or resolution change whatsoever, as that defeats my purpose of capturing the exact appearance of the screen in the screen cap. And I want to be confident that the program hasn't done those operations.

Hence the clip and optimize functions seem exactly what I don't want.

-- Graham

[angelize]

clipping is simply a non destructive way to crop your photo, if you don't want any other changes simply paste into a new document, clip, and export you will have a cropped screenshot exactly as you want.

[mwenz]

Welcome to the world of difference between a bitmap editor and a vector application, Graham.

I use to do a lot of software and hardware documentation, ancillary marketing materials, etc. I used PhotoShop a lot of the time to prep the various screen captures, but often enough I used CorelDraw (and now XDP).

But as you have found, how they (a vector app and a bitmap app) crop bitmaps are decidedly different. But this doesn't matter in the end. I don't know what you are using for eventual layout (or if you are using a layout or word processing software). Doesn't really matter I suppose.

But as angelize wrote, the fastest means is to double click on the image and adjust the crop. While in a vector application that cropping is non-destructive (unlike a bitmap application) it doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

With the cropped image selected, use File | Export JPEG (or Export PNG) and save the selected screen shot. Only the cropped portion that is viewable is exported. One thing nice about the non-destructive nature (and so why I used CD a bunch) is one can adjust the crop area without taking another screen capture later on.

So my work flow was:

(1) Start the vector app with a new page.
(2) screen cap what I needed.
(3) paste on the page.
(4) crop to desired portion.
(5) save the still selected cropped image into my working folder.
(6) move the cropped image off to the side.
(7) do another, and another, etc.

However, to speed things up in XDP--and I don't know if your Xara version can do this or not--I assigned shortcut keys to both the Export JPEG and Export PNG file menu functions.

Shift + J = Export JPEG
Shift + P = Export PNG

So while I wrote down 7 "steps" above, it is quite fast with less mouse movement.

(The whole adjusting thing mentioned in the help file isn't mandatory.)

Take care, Mike

[gwideman]

Welcome to the world of difference between a bitmap editor and a vector application, Graham.

First off, I expected P&GD to operate as a bitmap app, true. And OK, I get that it's useful to have a non-destructive clip ability, fair enough. But for what I am doing, I want it to at least have the really basic bitmap functions available and convenient. Sure, if you don't care that your screenshot gets resampled (and sometimes that's a plus), then OK, but in my case I need to be able to show the exact appearance of the screen, no messing with it.

For example, I may be showing a problem in the level of antialiasing of a piece of text, or a line. In that case, having the "bitmap" program mess with the bitmap in unwanted ways is not acceptable.

-- Graham

[gwideman]

Hi angelize. Thanks for thinking about this possibility. However, since I often want the next step to be adding something to the bitmap, such as some annotation text, this having to save the file, then reload it would be tedious.
But worse, during the export/save you still have to go through a dialog which is essentially the same as the Photo optimize dialog, where it still wants you to choose various scaling, resampling, antialiasing options. And I can tell in the preview window that none of these leave the bitmap unmolested. So that isn't the answer either, I'm afraid.
-- Graham

[angelize]

Photo & Graphic Designer is not a bitmap application. It is a lighter version of Designer Pro both of which are Vector Illustration programs that also do photo editing. And as far as I know the old CorelXara which is what I think you are thinking of and PhotoImpact are two different critters. ( although someone may come along and correct me here)

If you want to add text or mark ups to the image simply do so before you export. Exporting is simply saving into another format. Jpeg and or Png will give you options for resloution and in the case of png alpha transparency. I often do sreenshots for tutorials and for explaining things on the forums and I have never encountered an issue with this. If you follow the steps that Mike has very nicely laid out, it does work.

[mwenz]

You perhaps didn't notice that we're discussing Photo and Graphic Designer, a bitmap application, and Photoimpact, which is P&GD's ancestor, also a bitmap app.
-- Graham

And here I thought Photoimpact was originally a Ulead, and later a Corel, product.

Glad I can learn something new every day...

Mike

[gwideman]

Please unlearn that.. I was wrong. :-( See next message.