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Re: switching to CMS/strategy for screenshots needed
Subject:Re: switching to CMS/strategy for screenshots needed From:Robert Lauriston <robert -at- lauriston -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 5 Feb 2010 08:43:34 -0800
Arbitrarily resizing all screen shots to the same size might make your
document look weird and unprofessional.
Resizing screen shots generally degrades the image and can distort
text so it looks strange or unreadable. If you reduce by a
whole-number ratio (e.g. reduce a 600-pixel-wide image to 300 or 200)
you won't get so many artifacts but small text may still be
unreadable.
My approach is to impose a policy that screen shots cannot be exceed
certain dimensions (e.g. if you're placing them at 75 dpi, a 6.5"
column can't hold more than 487) and require the people who take the
screen shots to crop them accordingly.
On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 4:50 AM, Patryk Korman
<patryk -dot- korman -at- native-instruments -dot- de> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I'm preparing a content management system and the documentation
> processes in our techwrite department for switiching to cm within the
> next few weeks. Now altogether this took about a year and—with great
> foresight—I saved the best parts for the end.
> So now there's a problem which I'm not quite sure how to address: 90% of
> our documentation is software manuals, so there is a lot of screenshots
> involved. Screenshots are taken by the authors (external), placed in the
> source documents (word/Oo), and sized to fit later on when we shape
> documents in the DTP app. Now for the future, there will be no more
> manual document design, so the graphics have to arrive at the cms in a
> final size. What I could do:
> 1. Take screenshots on a single computer, find a size that fits the
> layout and batch-size all graphics after importing the documents to the
> cms (but I can't, since screenshots have to be taken by the authors on
> their private computers)
> 2. Adjust the size in the cms one by one after importing the documents
> (no option since PDFs are created dynamically from data base content, so
> there'd be no layout context for orientation. Furthermore, I don't want
> to do that).
> 3. Find a way to somehow import the screenshots exactly the same size
> they were sized to within the word document.
> Now obviously option three would be the most favorable, but I haven't
> found an adequate way or tool yet.
> If anyone ever came across a similar problem and found a solution, or if
> you have any ideas, input is greatly appreciated.
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