screen captures: how to get the best quality

[livetoski]

I have Snagit and Capture and am just curious to know if there are any tips you can give me to get the best looking screen capture.

[Nita Beck]

I'm guessing you haven't gotten any replies because your question is a very broad one, and the short answer is, "It depends." Good screen captures for your particular situation might not satisfy someone else's situation. You need to consider a whole range of characteristics: color depth, dpi, resizing, print vs. screen, format (.jpeg, .bmp, .gif, .png) and so forth.

I think you can find some broad guidelines elsewhere than on the forums. Certainly the Flare Help system has a lot of material on images/graphics/pictures, and since you have Capture, check out the information on resolution and quality settings, among other topics. There is probably also some good tutorial material on screen capture quality somewhere out on the web.

After that, you are likely to need to spend some time experimenting with your tools and with observing how images are handled by Flare until you get the results you're looking for.

Sorry that I can't offer an explicit "here's how" answer.

[livetoski]

Thanks Nita, my graphic support here where I work has told me that the likelihood is that I've got as good as I am going to get. I am capturing screens and saving them as jpegs and publishing them through Flare as pdf, so they get a real work over. I am actually surprised that they look as good as they do. I just have one of my SMEs asking if I couldn't do better.

Thanks again. Linda

[Andrew]

Thanks Nita, my graphic support here where I work has told me that the likelihood is that I've got as good as I am going to get. I am capturing screens and saving them as jpegs and publishing them through Flare as pdf, so they get a real work over. I am actually surprised that they look as good as they do. I just have one of my SMEs asking if I couldn't do better.

Thanks again. Linda

Zoom into the PDF. They often look horrible at 100%, but when you get to 125% or 150% they look great. And they look pretty good printed as well. At least, that's been my experience. Something about PDF's algorithms that resize the pictures produces horrific results at lower magnifications.

[livetoski]

Thanks for that. I noticed that at lower resolutions, but didn't try higher. The other problem though, is that most people are printing the darn things and that's where I am getting the critique. We are just trying to cram more than one on a page, and that is presenting readability issues. We've been down the path of providing only html help and the users want pdfs, and they print them, and so does our technical support. It's all about the user!

[Andrew]

Ah, so you are aggressively downsizing them. Yeah, that's going to produce poor results after a certain point, no matter what you do.

However, you might try using PNGs...sometimes they are a little more clear for screenshots.

[Nita Beck]

I agree with Andrew re .pngs for screen captures. I've had good luck with them both on screen and in print. The only time I use .jpegs is for photos.

(I'm glad I got the conversation rolling on your topic. Let's see if others beyond Andrew and myself now offer you some additional explicit tips!)

[NorthEast]

Yes, I'd third the suggestion of using PNGs.
The trade-off of using JPGs is that you will lose some of the quality; and whilst it's ok in photos, it's much more apparent on screenshots (e.g. fuzziness around text and hard edges).

You can control the PDF image compression options in Flare; although I think it defaults to maximum quality, so unless you've changed it you should be ok.

However, as mentioned, the on-screen image quality in a PDF can be a bit dodgy at certain magnifications; even if the underlying image (and printout) is high quality.

[livetoski]

Thanks all, this has really helped. I was just going to add the question about the PDF settings, and then Dave answered my question about compression. The last question is about "downsampling".

The help says this: Downsample images above: Select this if you want to downsample images and then enter the number of pixels per inch.

Should I do anything with this setting? The default appears to be 300 pixels. Thanks.

[RamonS]

I also tend to use .png, but in a recent project for PDF output only I used .wmf files and found the quality in the PDF to be very good. Nevertheless, it is still not as good as I wished, but given how many TW struggle with the same issue I guess there really isn't a good way to have crisp and clear screen shots in a PDF.

[ccardimon]

I use PNGs, too.

[livetoski]

I can't see how to capture or save as WMF in Capture, but it's included as a default capture format in SnagIt. I will start with SnagIt and pngs and make some comparisons with WMFs and see how it goes. Thank you all.

[NorthEast]

WMFs for screenshots?
I know the WMF format can incorporate bitmap images, but isn't it primarily a vector image format? I guess if you were adding text and captions to the screeshot image then having it in a WMF makes sense, as the text would be fully scalable. I'm not sure how saving just the raw image in WMF format would help though.

[livetoski]

In some cases, I am adding text and call out items, to clarify user steps, so I will keep the WMF difference in mind. Not that I have a clue, at this moment, what the difference between an image and a vector image is. As my life is now going all imagey, I'll have to read up.

I won't be following up with screen shots till next week, as I just have to get the limited field trial out, and the images are good enough for that for now. You guys are great!

[LTinker68]

Are you shrinking the image before putting it into Flare or using Flare to shrink the image from its original size?

In either case, the quality will fluctuate more than if the image is inserted at 100% of its captured dimensions. For instance, if your application screen size is 1024 x 768, for example, you're (probably) not going to want to insert the image at that size into the help. First, because that's taking up too much room in online help, and second, because it won't fit in print output at that size (unless you switch a page to landscape mode). So you'll probably need to shrink the screenshot, and depending on what program you use, the modified screenshot probably won't be as good a quality as the image is at 100%. That is one good thing I can say about Word -- it seems to do fine with image quality, even if you shrink the image inside Word. PDF, not so much. I have yet to find a program that can shrink a screenshot and still make it look as crisp as it did in the original.

It didn't sound like anyone else had mentioned that, so I wanted to make sure it was clear that if the image itself isn't sharp, then it won't be sharp in the output.

[livetoski]

I am only using the images for pdf. I am capturing them full size, and then shrinking them in Flare, as I wanted to preserve the original. I will start paying attention to the sizes, but I am way out of my depth here, for the time being. I am assuming that if I capture and keep the image full size, then I have the most options down the road, depending on the format, and from now on I will be using PNG, with maybe a little foray into WMF just to check out the differences.

[MikeKatz]

Are you shrinking the image before putting it into Flare or using Flare to shrink the image from its original size?

In either case, the quality will fluctuate more than if the image is inserted at 100% of its captured dimensions. For instance, if your application screen size is 1024 x 768, for example, you're (probably) not going to want to insert the image at that size into the help. First, because that's taking up too much room in online help, and second, because it won't fit in print output at that size (unless you switch a page to landscape mode). So you'll probably need to shrink the screenshot, and depending on what program you use, the modified screenshot probably won't be as good a quality as the image is at 100%. That is one good thing I can say about Word -- it seems to do fine with image quality, even if you shrink the image inside Word. PDF, not so much. I have yet to find a program that can shrink a screenshot and still make it look as crisp as it did in the original.

It didn't sound like anyone else had mentioned that, so I wanted to make sure it was clear that if the image itself isn't sharp, then it won't be sharp in the output.

Hi Lisa
Agreed on all the above. Two points:
1) I don't know how Word does it, but it really is excellent at retaining detail when you resize. Unfortunately, there's no way to keep that quality when you copy the resized image out of Word. I suppose you could capture the reduced image, though.
2) The best that I have found besides Word is Paint Shop Pro. It has pretty good capture options, and when you do a smart resize on the image, it's very good.

[RamonS]

WMFs for screenshots?
I know the WMF format can incorporate bitmap images, but isn't it primarily a vector image format? I guess if you were adding text and captions to the screeshot image then having it in a WMF makes sense, as the text would be fully scalable. I'm not sure how saving just the raw image in WMF format would help though.

I chose it because it is a vector based image format. I found that it looks better than PNG, but as mentioned before, it isn't awesome either. I do find that the WMF images scale better within the PDF. I am not sure why, it is just my observation.

[Andrew]

1) I don't know how Word does it, but it really is excellent at retaining detail when you resize. Unfortunately, there's no way to keep that quality when you copy the resized image out of Word.

Word uses some "tricks" to make its screen images look better, but I'm pretty sure it's only true for the screen. If you print, they don't look any better than other compressed images.

[LTinker68]

I chose it because it is a vector based image format.

That only matters if your original image is vector-based, like if you did the original in Illustrator or Visio. Vector-based formats would have no affect on a screen capture, because it sees the whole thing as one element with no mathematical information available, so it wouldn't be any better at retaining information for a resized image than a raster-based format would.

[LTinker68]

1) I don't know how Word does it, but it really is excellent at retaining detail when you resize. Unfortunately, there's no way to keep that quality when you copy the resized image out of Word.

Word uses some "tricks" to make its screen images look better, but I'm pretty sure it's only true for the screen. If you print, they don't look any better than other compressed images.

Actually it seems to be the other way around to me -- its print output looks better than its onscreen view.

[i-tietz]

I am only using the images for pdf. I am capturing them full size, and then shrinking them in Flare, as I wanted to preserve the original.

...
1. PNGs it should be - they're also great for printing if you don't reduce the colour space (= number of colours).
2. Honestly - I wouldn't have any software other than graphic software shrink my pics - no matter at what file format or colour space.
3. Don't insert the pic in Flare and then change the size for the view - e.g. if a pic that has 1000x800 pixels is inserted and you want it to be depicted at a size of let's say, 800x600 pixels ... that's even worse than having Flare doing the resizing, because you leave the resizing to the browser that is used to view the page ...
4. WMFs are BIG FILES!!! You should check the size of your PDFs and see how long it takes to print them - compared to the same PDFs with PNGs.

Generally:
If you have screens of 1024*768 pixels, a resolution of 300dpi should be fine, because: 1024 pixels / 300 dpi = 3,41 inches in print, i.e. in PDF.
3,5" are not a lot, considering that a sheet of paper has a width of around 7" - resizing the pic shouldn't be necessary at all.

[MikeKatz]

1) I don't know how Word does it, but it really is excellent at retaining detail when you resize. Unfortunately, there's no way to keep that quality when you copy the resized image out of Word.

Word uses some "tricks" to make its screen images look better, but I'm pretty sure it's only true for the screen. If you print, they don't look any better than other compressed images.

I disagree. I've printed many manuals from Word documents, and the quality is excellent.

[LTinker68]

Generally:
If you have screens of 1024*768 pixels, a resolution of 300dpi should be fine, because: 1024 pixels / 300 dpi = 3,41 inches in print, i.e. in PDF.
3,5" are not a lot, considering that a sheet of paper has a width of around 7" - resizing the pic shouldn't be necessary at all.

Ok, bad example. We have some apps that are bigger and more square, and leaving them at 100% takes up too much unnecessary space. I tend to shrink them down before putting them in Flare.

[RamonS]

I chose it because it is a vector based image format.

That only matters if your original image is vector-based, like if you did the original in Illustrator or Visio. Vector-based formats would have no affect on a screen capture, because it sees the whole thing as one element with no mathematical information available, so it wouldn't be any better at retaining information for a resized image than a raster-based format would.

Hmmmm, OK, I admit that my knowledge of vector based images is limited to me knowing that they exist and what they are there for. I did read that the screen shot in the clipboard comes as bitmap and as vector, but of course I cannot find that article anymore. Who knows, maybe there is just something to the way the image gets processed that makes it look less mushy and fuzzy.
Still, there seems to be no way to get decent screenshots into a PDF.