TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
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
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.
