Question

Subject: Creating high resolution screenshots Category: Computers > Graphics Asked by: oldman-ga List Price: $15.00 Good day! Posted: 27 Jun 2006 11:31 PDT Expires: 27 Jul 2006 11:31 PDT Question ID: 741528

I need to create high-resolution screenshots of my software. I need the screenshots to be 600 dpi so they could be inserted into brochures or printed documents and remain good quality, just like in computer magazines. I am a programmer, but have no idea how to do that. Please provide me with instructions on how to acheive this. I have Paint Shop Pro but can also install Photoshop. In any case, I need step by step instructions. Thank you!

Answer
Subject: Re: Creating high resolution screenshots Answered By: crabcakes-ga on 27 Jun 2006 16:48 PDT Rated: Hello Oldman, The first thing I would do, would be to set your screen resolution to the highest possible (1280 x 800 for my screen. This site gives a good step by step set of directions for using PhotoShop. However, I feel certain you can do this in Paint Shop Pro. I have been printing clear screenshots for a long time by selecting the very highest resolution setting on my printer, http://www.turbophoto.com/Photoshop-Tricks/screenshot-photoshop-trick/index.htm GraphicPush has a little different solution: http://www.graphicpush.com/index.php?id=58 Readers of the above procedure had some additional comments and methods of their own: ?Here?s another alternative that offers nearly identical results without as much hassle? (I worked for seven years in print before my last five were spent primarily on screen). So here goes? We all know simply resizing a 72dpi image to 300 is gonna result in some ugly blurry, fuzziness, etc. We can avoid this by disabling Photoshop?s bicubing resampling (the process that PS uses to resize images). Disabling bicubing resampling (in simple terms) forces Photoshop to simply multiply pixels as they are, instead of adding new pixels consisting of blended colors to ?soften? a resized picture. While you typically don?t want to turn this off, cause it?ll really screw up photos if you resize this way, it works perfectly for sizing up screen shots. And its this easy: > Open your General Photoshop Preferences Dialog. > Switch Interpolation from ?Bicubic? to ?Nearest Neighbor? > Resize your image to the needed size at 300dpi And you?re done. Perfect. Same end results as the aforementioned vector trick, in a lot less time. Yes, you still have a large print-worthy bitmap file to deal with, but that?s why we have 80gig hard drives. PS. Be sure to switch your interpolation settings back when you?re done.? Another: ??m an interactive designer, but I think the following will be useful. When using nearest neighbor with screenshots, also use 100% increments to avoid creating ugly jaggies in the interpolation. Example: if you

have a perfectly sharp 2x2 pixel image and want it bigger without any funny business, you?d want a 4x4 pixel image. So technically, you should not interpolate 72DPI to 300DPI as the linked article suggests, do 288DPI or 360DPI instead. Otherwise, you will end up with crap pixels here and there?formally pristine lines suddenly crooked, odd bulges in text output, etc. Ugh. On a side note, you may not need to upsample the screenshot to high DPI?just scale it in your layout program, not in Photoshop. The imagesetter/postscript will do the scaling for you. The ?300DPI rule? is to prevent blocky-looking PHOTOS at typical LPI settings; when you use a low-res photo by accident in print, and it comes out blocky, that is actually what you want in the screenshot. It probably depends on the imagesetter you?re outputting to. This is probably the same thing that Jim is saying with ?just save as EPS from Photoshop?. In this case, you?re saving a bitmap EPS from photoshop (not vector), and the layout program just interpolates the data the way it will.? http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000018.html ScreenPrinter will allow you to try out their software for free: http://www.etrusoft.com/screen-capture-software-reviews/Screen_Printer.htm Snagit is another program that may interest you, but it does not seem to sharpen images, although they advertise clearer prints. You can try it for free. http://www.techsmith.com/snagit/snagvsprintscreen.asp http://www.techsmith.com/ Download a fully functioning free trial: http://www.techsmith.com/download/trials.asp Ashampoo is recommended by About, and it has a free trial: http://graphicssoft.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=graphicssoft&zu=http%3A% 2F%2Fwww.ashampoo.com%2Ffrontend%2Fproducts%2Fphp%2Fproduct.php%3Fsession_langid%3D2%26id string%3D0024%26quickmenu%3D0 Other options, none of which I am familiar with (Not to say they are not a solution for you) http://www.stratopoint.com/czoomer_screenshots.htm

These and more tips can be found at the following About site: ?? Set up your screen with the final destination of your screen capture in mind. Good color schemes and fonts for on-screen display do not necessarily translate well to color or grayscale printing. ? Be consistent in the screen resolution settings of your monitor and the size of the application windows. ? Unless your object is to show off wallpaper and wild color schemes, stick with non-exotic colors such as the standard Windows desktop scheme. You can create a color scheme specifically for doing screen captures. ? Avoid desktop color schemes that include gradient colors. Switch to solid colors. ? Consider converting color screen captures to grayscale. Experiment ? some color combinations work better in grayscale than others.? http://desktoppub.about.com/od/screencaptures/l/aa_screensetup.htm Don?t forget about the lossy characteristics of jpg (aka jpeg) format: http://www.computerbuddies.us/myths_and_facts_about_jpg.htm ?Hello Hanford, After reading your comment on my blog I decided to

stop by your blog and really enjoyed reading this article. It is pretty amazing that even companies like Google can fail to take clean and crisp screenshots. Recently, the print screen button on my Win XP wasn't working so I downloaded a screen shot utility which optimizes the screen shots before saving them. I noticed the same problem with the screen shots, i.e. they weren't crisp (even on my monitor). Upon a little investigation I found that the screen shot utility was saving the screen shots in an optimized format (JPG 70%). Since I needed to edit the shots in photoshop, I raised the quality of JPG and voila! all my screen shots were crisp from that point on. I have been working on a project called OpenEncyclopaedia.com (OE) and after making this comment I am going to contribute a link to this post to OE (hope that's OK with you). Frank Mash? ?After reading your comment on my blog I decided to stop by your blog and really enjoyed reading this article. It is pretty amazing that even companies like Google can fail to take clean and crisp screenshots. Recently, the print screen button on my Win XP wasn;t working so I downloaded a screen shot utility which optimizes the screen shots before saving them. I noticed the same problem with the screen shots, i.e. they weren;t crisp (even on my monitor). Upon a little investigation I found that the screen shot utility was saving the screen shots in an optimized format (JPG 70%). Since I needed to edit the shots in photoshop, I raised the quality of JPG and voila! all my screen shots were crisp from that point on. I have been working on a project called OpenEncyclopaedia.com (OE) and after making this comment I am going to contribute a link to this post to OE (hope that;s OK with you)? Frank Mash http://blog.hanfordlemoore.com/2006/01/09/taking-screenshots-for-your-blog/feed/

?I've found the same problem. In my case I found that printing screenshots at 600dpi on an HP4 and then reproducing them on a Xerox 5090 gave horrible results. To get around this I printed my screens at 300dpi on the HP -- when these shots went through the photocopier they produced better results than the 600dpi versions.? http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/archives/9703/techwhirl-9703-00459.html This article helps explain printing at 300DPI vs 600DPI http://www.blaha.net/Main%20Picture%20Resolution.htm One more tip, if you use PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro, consider using a macro/script to batch sharpen many images easily. I trust one or more of these solutions will do the trick for you! If not, please request an Answer Clarification, before you rate, and I will assist you further on this question. Sincerely, Crabcakes Search Terms ============ Printing sharp screenshots Crisp screenshots Sharp screenshots + software

How To Resize Images And Maintain Original Sharpness

You have a nice big beautiful photo. It is gorgeous. But you smaller, and by the time the file is down to the right size, the image has started to take on a blurry look. This is a real images, but luckily in Photoshop there's a very simple with Photoshop CS and CS2. If you don't have a CS version try and get one as soon as you can, because they are full of features. For earlier versions of Photoshop there's a end of this tip. When you want to reduce an image go to the Image> Click on Resample Image and choose Bicubic Sharper menu. This is the best setting for making sure that an The example photo of the flower started at 2,000 pixels down to 250, and then again to 125 with almost no loss of sharpness. For enlarging an image select Bicubic Smoother. I found this to be such an effective trick that I wished it had been the default setting in Photoshop for the Image Size menu from the start. Then I discovered I could set it as the default myself. All you need to do is go to Preferences> General and you'll see Image Interpolation and there you can pick Bicubic Sharper from the choices. Another thing to keep in mind when resizing is to try to do it only once on an image. Many people will resize repeatedly as they search for the perfect fit for a design element, and then end up with an image with a lot of blur. It's always better to experiment on a duplicate of the image. Then, when you've settled on the final dimensions, you can go back to the original and resize it just once. need it much, much you might find that problem with resizing solution. This tip will only work yet I recommend you powerful new workaround at the Image Size menu. from the drop-down image doesn't blur. across. I stepped it

Pre-CS Workaround
In earlier versions of Photoshop simply zoom out so that your window and image are at either 50% or 25%, and then take a screenshot of the image window at this new reduced size. You'll find that the image will maintain its sharpness. Now open the screenshot in Photoshop, and crop and save. The trick to making this work is to use either a 50%, 25%, or 12.5% view size before making the capture. If you view the image at 66.7%, 33.3%, or 16.7%, the image will not be as sharp due to the way Photoshop draws images at those sizes.

Troubleshooting
Never resize a GIF image. First change the mode to RGB Color (Image> Mode> RGB Color), and then resize. You can still save your resized image as a GIF, just do not apply resizing while the image is in the GIF mode.