Screen shots blurry

[Steveman]

Hi,
Pretty new to Capture but being using Flare a couple of months. I'm updating a Word-based manual and Flare-orrising it. Some of the screen shots in the manual I can't replicate because I don't have access to the system that the manual is for. So I've been using Capture to capture the screen shot from the word doc and import it into Flare.

Problem is the image looks clear as a bell in Capture but when I import it into Flare it becomes slightly blurry. Dragging the image a little bit doesn't seem to improve the focus. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. I guess effectively taking a screenshot of a screenshot doesn't help, but as I said, it looks fine in Capture.

Any hints?

[ChoccieMuffin]

Do you have access to the Word files, or just a PDF?

If you do, can you copy the image from the Word file and paste it into a graphics package, like Photoshop, or even Paint if you're desperate? You might find that's a less fuzzy way to create a separate graphic file from the thing in your Word doc.

And play around with the file format too. I've found JPG can be fuzzy, and white space sometimes has little dots all over the place, which is a pain.

[SteveS]

OK, heres a cunning plan...

Open the Word document in Word 2007 or 2010 and save the document as a .docx.

Open Windows explorer and find the docx file. Change the file extension to .zip (you'll have to answer that dialog warning the world will end because you're going to make a file unstable by changing its extension).

Open the zip file you just 'created'. In the \word\media directory you will find all the images from the document!

HTH

[Steveman]

That is a cunning plan! Devious almost.

I have access to the Word doc but as I suspected its probably more a case of copying a copy of an imagecopied from something else, so the image quality will degrade each time. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't some 'image quality' setting somewhere that I was missing.

[SteveS]

The problem with a screenshot is its always going to be 96 dpi (or 72).

Added to that is the resampling that occurs when Word displays the image (I always set my screenshots so that they can be displayed at 100%, and turn off Word's Lock Aspect Ration setting for each image, its amazing how much clearer the image can be).

It's always better to get the original if you can...

[CarolrWade]

Although this discussion appears to have ended last year, I think is it worth mentioning the discussion in the Flare online help "Raster Versus Vector Images" in the About Images topic.

Has anyone tried saving screenshots in vector image format (EPS, PS, and SVG) as this is Flare's recommended approach to maintaining image quality regardless of output type or image size? If so, what are the "gotchas?"

Thanks!

[i-tietz]

Convert screenshots into vector graphics? I've never seen that working, not even with pro software like photoshop & co, but I have to admit that the last time I tried is about 5 years ago ...
We use plenty of screenshots for our documents and use the PNG format, which works well for screen and even for print (on normal laser printers and ink jets), although we do not enlarge the pics to get a higher dpi for an alleged higher print quality ... or is it because of that?

[CarolrWade]

I was just going off what I read in the Flare Help. Further investigation did not reveal any software that can actually take a screenshot & save it as a vector graphic. Guess I'm just showing my ignorance. Still, I'm wondering why that information is in the help if no practical application exists.

PNG has always worked the best for me, also...

[ajturnersurrey]

Hmmm...

I thought I'd try this experiment. (I too usually use .png for best results, but my black and white screenshots still leave a lot to be desired in print.)

I can open an image in Visio and save it as .svg
I can then insert this image and see it in my topic in the Flare 8 XML editor
But the image is missing if I try to preview or build pdf

So no .svg files for me