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Subject:Re: Screen shots From:David Wernick <tirza -at- NETMEDIA -dot- NET -dot- IL> Date:Fri, 21 Feb 1997 08:56:56 +0200
Laurie Clark wrote:
> Does anyone have a good method for capturing a screen, reducing it
> in size (say 10-20%) and using it as an object or "picture" in the
> document?
>
> All of my attempts (e.g. CorelDraw, CorelPaint, PaintShop,
> etc. with or without anti-aliasing) yield either choppy barely readable
> text or blurry text that makes me think I need glasses).
The problem is that the lines forming the text characters in a bitmap are
usually only one or two pixels thick. When you reduce the size, the lines
are thinned unevenly to zero or one pixel. The lines become jagged or parts
of the characters disappear. You can observe this easily if you zoom the
view of a bitmap, before and after reduction.
There are several possible solutions:
* If the software you are documenting permits, use a large, bold, sans-serif
font in the original screen you are capturing.
* Instead of reducing the size of the screen capture, reduce the size of
window you are documenting before you capture it.
* Often, only a small portion of the screen is significant to the point you
are documenting. If this is the case, leave the screen capture at its
original scale but crop it to display only the significant portion.
* If the screen capture contains only a small amount of text, erase the text
in Corel Photo-Paint, import the bitmap minus text to CorelDraw, and
reinsert the text in the appropriate size.
David Wernick
WritePoint (formerly TIRZA)
Developers of:
* User's Guides * Technical Manuals * Online Documents *
* Custom MS Word Macros * Authoring Tools *
Web http://www.writepoint.com
Tel 972-3-9362170 Fax 972-3-9363645
Email david -at- writepoint -dot- com
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