Re: Screen captures crash my image processor

Subject: Re: Screen captures crash my image processor
From: Max Wyss <prodok -at- prodok -dot- ch>
To: "Curtis Brautigam" <curtisb -at- nurserysupplies -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 23:10:00 +0200

Curtis,

you might consider it as a sign from the forces that rule the universe...

Screenshots should not be treated with the JPEG compression, unless they are actually photo-like images. Screenshots usually have few colors, big and well defined contrast, no textures, and bigger areas of exactly the same color.

Such images are not treated well with the JPEG compression, and you will notice artefacts around your contrasts (making the images look blurry or "dirty").

I have encountered such problems when running low on system memory. It could also be that your screenshot software has serious memory leaks, which fill up the available system memory and when it is filled up .... crash and burn.

If you can do it, try not to take and process the screenshots simultaneously. If you have only one computer available, save the screenshots and process them afterwards; if you have two machines available, save the screenshots and process them on the other machine.

For resampling and setting the appropriate resolution, I have made good experiences with Photoshop.

I assume that you resample in order to get different absolute dimensions of your screenshot (and not for reducing the file size). For reducing the file size, reduce the colors by switching to an indexed color format, if possible with exact number of colors, and then save in a format which allows lossless compression, such as GIF or TIFF.

Hope, this can help.


Max Wyss
PRODOK Engineering
Low Paper workflows, Smart documents, PDF forms
CH-8906 Bonstetten, Switzerland

Fax: +41 1 700 20 37
e-mail: mailto:prodok -at- prodok -dot- ch
http://www.prodok.ch



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I am working on user manuals that involve a lot of screen captures. I do the
screen capture and place it in an image processing program (Corel
PhotoPaint). There I resample it and convert it to JPEG to compress it. What
has been happening on an increasingly frequent basis is that I place the
screen capture in the image processing program, and the program freezes up.
I have to close everything that is running on my computer, save my material
(in FrameMaker) and then reboot. About a couple of months ago, our IT
department installed a new video card with increased memory in my computer,
and it solved the problem for a while. However, it is recurring once again.
I tried to resample and compress in other programs (PSP, Photoshop) but that
didn't work.





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