Problem with screenshots

[Txurce]

Command-shift-3 takes a PDF screenshot of the entire screen. Command-shift-4 allows you to drag a crosshairs to select an area - when you let go, it takes a picture of that area. Sometimes.

More often then not, I'll get a black or gray screenshot. This happens most often trying to take a picture of the world map on the Defense Advisor screen. Is there a method to doing this so that I don't have to keep pausing the game to see if the screenshot came out okay, then going through the whole procedure again?

 

[tao]

I often had the same problem and thus only do <cmd>-<shift>-3. Since you always have to crop and process the picture, this is the best way. And you have included the info box giving you date, tech researched, etc.

 

[Txurce]

Okay, I have another problem. I have Appleworks and Graphic Converter available for working on screenshots. One problem I've had is reducing screenshots to a workable size. Even when I indicate a smaller size, it often doesn't turn out as I imagined. I believe Graphic Converter notes that the reducing function won't work accurately if something about a 'resource fork" isn't addressed - but I have no idea what this means. Does anyone use these programs to re-size game images, who could then advise me?


Thanks a lot.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Txurce
Does anyone use these programs to re-size game images, who could then advise me?

If I can ever get a moment when this @*$%£ server will accept connections I'll submit a reply ...... Ahhh! Here we go ....

I have never had success with cmd-shift-4, and only use cmd-shift-3. I use Photoshop Elements to edit screenshots. I can paint in anything I like, and its crop function followed by Save for Web works like a charm.

It doesn't look as if Appleworks can edit the .pdf images created by cmd-shift-3, it can only include them in other documents in their entirety. I assume you use Preview to convert the .pdf to a jpg in order to open it in GraphicConverter? FYI I also came up with DropJPEG on VersionTracker. You just drop a screenshot onto it and it converts it to a .jpg. Here's one I did that way, and I had no problems I'm aware of with resource forks or whatever:

HTH

 

[Txurce]

Alan, I picked up DropJPEG, but I could already convert .pdf files into .jpg with Graphic Converter and, more problematically, with Appleworks. My problem is reducing the size of the images to something which doesn't stretch the page too far - 67K, I believe, is the suggested max.


The preeeding is a test of embedding with a .gif file.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Txurce
My problem is reducing the size of the images to something which doesn't stretch the page too far - 67K, I believe, is the suggested max.

How did you manage to convert to jpg using GraphicConverter? It wouldn't even open a .pdf for me. I only suggested DropJPEG because it is such convenient.

The image size has two important parameters that affect the web page:

1. The number of pixels in the image width determines whether the whole page will have to expand to display it. If the page expands then all posts will have text that's too wide for people's normal browser windows, so this is the most important parameter. I suggest you limit the image width to something like 600 pixels to ensure that you are well within the normal bounds.

2. The number of bytes in the image affects the download time for the page. You can adjust it by reducing coior depth and other factors before saving the jpeg. Personally I don't worry too much about minimizing the file size. As long as the image size is less than about 100K I figure it'll be all right, I don't upload many of them. As more people get broadband connections this factor will become less important.

 

[tao]

Originally posted by AlanH
2. The number of bytes in the image affects the download time for the page. You can adjust it by reducing coior depth and other factors before saving the jpeg. Personally I don't worry too much about minimizing the file size. As long as the image size is less than about 100K I figure it'll be all right, I don't upload many of them. As more people get broadband connections this factor will become less important.

Maybe I'm too old fashioned, but I always try to optimize my pictures for best quality/size relation.

If you download a CFF page with 10 pictures, it makes a difference whether each is 80k or 20k even with a broadband connection. OTOH you have to consider the server side with possibly hundreds of people loading pages concurrently.

PS: If I post world maps (or other "non-photographic" images), I often use gif instead of jpeg, because then the images are even smaller.

PPS: Photoshop's "save for web" functionality really rocks.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by tao
Maybe I'm too old fashioned, but I always try to optimize my pictures for best quality/size relation.

I certainly try to reduce file size, but I'm no expert on the relative merits of all the different compression options, and life's too short to learn everything. So I hit a few options and if the preview still looks OK and the size isn't too big I save it.

In Photoshop I normally choose .gif. However, as I was responding to Txurce's request concerning GraphicConverter I tried that, and it didn't seem to have .gif as an output option - presumably because of the Compuserve license issues. So I avoided suggesting it.

 

[Txurce]

Alan and tao:

GC allows you to convert just about any file type to any other. Look up a couple of posts, and you'll see that I took your advice and tried a .gif file, saved from a .pdf file. It's too big, throwing off the entire page. Any advice on that, besides investing in Photoshop for the sole purpose of showing my screenshots rather than linking them?

 

[tao]

Originally posted by Txurce
It's too big, throwing off the entire page. Any advice on that, besides investing in Photoshop for the sole purpose of showing my screenshots rather than linking them?

Txurce; you have to differentiate bwetween 2 completely different aspects of "picture size":

1. dimension (or resolution), i.e. the number of pixels in horizontal and vertical direction
2. the size in bytes
   [/list=1] If you want to prepare pictures for posting, you go thru a two step process:
   1. reduce the resolution to something between 600 and 800 pixel horizontal resolution. Usually you get best visual results, if you reduce pictures by something like 2:1, 3:1. I often add/remove some rows before resampling to achieve this.
   2. Choosing the best format for saving at minimal acceptable file size. Usually gif if few colors, jpeg is many colors / photographic image.
      GraphicConverter has a "save copy as command" and the options allow you to set the jpeg quality (affecting picture size) and preview the visual quality.
      [/list=1]

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by Txurce
Alan and tao:

GC allows you to convert just about any file type to any other. Look up a couple of posts, and you'll see that I took your advice and tried a .gif file, saved from a .pdf file. It's too big, throwing off the entire page. Any advice on that, besides investing in Photoshop for the sole purpose of showing my screenshots rather than linking them?

I took your image off the page by right clicking it in Safari and selecting Copy Image to Clipboard. I opened Graphic Converter, waited 30 seconds because I haven't paid the registration fee, (which is comparable to the cost of Photoshop Elements), and selected "New Image With Clipboard" in the File menu. I then selected Size/Scale in the Picture menu and entered 50%, with Keep Proportions enabled. I then saved it, selecting GIF format and with no changes to the default options. The result is the 52 KByte file below. Is this what you are trying to achieve?

 

[tao]

AlanH, Txurce:

This is definitely wrong. Civ III screenshots are "photographic" and thus should be saved in JPEG (which is an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group) format.

To do a real good job, move the info box and minimap towards the center and clip the black parts.

Save as jpeg, visually controling image quality vs. file size. This will give you an image with something between 25 and 30 kb.

 

[Txurce]

Okay, you guys have given me a lot to work with. Thanks a lot - I'll report back as soon as I can sink into this.

Much tougher than the GOTM!

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by tao
AlanH, Txurce:

This is definitely wrong. Civ III screenshots are "photographic" and thus should be saved in JPEG (which is an acronym for Joint Photographic Experts Group) format.

Not true. Maps produced by Civ3 can be reproduced as a GIF as they have a limited palette and are certainly not photographic. And you actually stated that you use gif for map screenies a couple of posts ago!

To do a real good job, move the info box and minimap towards the center and clip the black parts.

Agreed. I was just trying to give Txurce some simple pointers to where to find the GC commands that he seemed to have problems with, by using his own screenshot.[/B][/QUOTE]

 

[tao]

Originally posted by AlanH
Not true. Maps produced by Civ3 can be reproduced as a GIF as they have a limited palette and are certainly not photographic. And you actually stated that you use gif for map screenies a couple of posts ago!

Maybe I was not clear enough:

• I use GIF for world maps, e.g from the military advisor screen.
• I use JPEG for screenshots showing the landscape etc.

 

[Zwingli]

Good tips for taking screenshots . I didn't know the difference between GIF and JPEG images before and just converted everything to JPEG.

I use Appleworks exclusively to edit and convert my screenshots, but am using OS 9 which produces "PICT" screenshots rather than .pdf files. Probably Appleworks can't handle pdf files quite as well, but it has all of the basic tools available and is able to edit PICT screenshots.

 

[Txurce]

Zwingli, if you use Appleworks exclusively, how do you reduce size to fith the CFC parameters? I follow what to do with GC (which I don't own), but wouldn't mind understanding Appleworks, so I can beter decide which to use as my basic graphics tool.

 

[AlanH]

Originally posted by tao

Maybe I was not clear enough:

• I use GIF for world maps, e.g from the military advisor screen.
• I use JPEG for screenshots showing the landscape etc.

I thougth I'd better do an experiment. Here are two versions of the same screenshot, with the status and minimap bits sliced and diced as suggested. One's a gif and the other's a jpeg. They are a bit under 800 pixels wide.

Which is which (without peeking at the file names)? And which is the bigger file?

Spoiler :

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The first one's the jpeg, and it's 30K. The second one is the 88K gif. The gif file can be reduced in size but it loses a lot of color and detail. Guess I'll go for jpg from here on in.

 

[tao]

For those who know it is "obvious". JPEG creates visual artefacts in uniform colors. You may notice it in the minimap and the info window. This is caused by the very nature of the JPEG algorithm, which is a lossy compression. You sacrifice some of the crispness in order to reduce the size. The human eye forgives this in "photographic" images.

The situation is completely different if you have "few" colors in uniform areas, e.g. power graphs or minimaps. GIF is a lossless compression, using roughly speaking something like "20 pixels in color 14" encoding. The fewer colors you choose, the greater the areas and thus the compression.

 

[Zwingli]

Txurce,
Here are a few techniques I use on Appleworks to reduce image size. These might be available only in OS 9 unless pdf screenshots can be opened as draw documents (PICT files open as draw documents).

To simply reduced the scale of a screenshot, you can use the "Scale by Percent" option in the "Arrange" menu:

Cropping a screenshot to reduce its size requires two steps.

Step 1: Select "Ungroup Image" from the "Arrange" menu to allow the image to be altered.

Step 2: Select the portion of your screenshot which you wish to display. Then, copy and paste the selected portion and delete the rest of the image which leaves only the desired portion of the screenshot behind.

After you have resized or cropped your screenshot, save it as a JPEG (it doesn't look like GIF format is available).