picture print quality

[KellyG]

I am creating technical documentation which includes hundreds of screenshots captured in SnagIt. I am copying and pasting the bmp's into Word2000 (using a table as a frame to allign my pictures). Because of the varying sizes of the captured bmp's, I need to adjust each one to fit the frame. How can I maintain a good print quality on reduced pictures?

 

[Word Heretic]

G'day KellyG <[email protected]>,

Scale them rather than hard resizing them in an art package.

Eg, 33% scale ~= 300dpi
100% = 100 dpi

etc

Steve Hudson - Word Heretic
Want a hyperlinked index? S/W R&D? See WordHeretic.com

steve from wordheretic.com (Email replies require payment)


KellyG reckoned:

 

[CAndersen (Kimba)]

I am creating technical documentation which includes hundreds of
screenshots captured in SnagIt. I am copying and pasting the bmp's into
Word2000 (using a table as a frame to allign my pictures). Because of the
varying sizes of the captured bmp's, I need to adjust each one to fit the
frame. How can I maintain a good print quality on reduced pictures?

To what size are you reducing them? In my current project, I'm sizing all
my screen shots (taken from a 1024x768, 96dpi screen) at 67%, and they look
fine. The only problem I had with print quality was that the printer driver
on this PC defaulted to "Econo-Mode", which produced fuzzy images. Turning
that off gave me crisp printed output.

I'm assuming Snagit produces images at normal screen resolution, just as
the Print Screen key does. You mention BMP format, so lossy compression
shouldn't be the problem.

Personally, I question the practice of resizing screen shots to varying
degrees to fit them into an arbitrary frame size. You're removing an
important visual cue to learning whatever it is you're documenting, by not
presenting things in proper proportion to each other.

 

[CAndersen (Kimba)]

Scale them rather than hard resizing them in an art package.

(My news server is slow picking up messages. If I had seen this, I never
would have bothered writing what I wrote.)

Definitely, never resize screen shots in an art package. Always use Word's
Scaling function to resize them. (right-click on picture > Format Picture >
Size tab).

 

[KellyG]

I just took a quick sample of the 204 screenshots, and their range is (original size) from (797x493 down to 367x443 96dpi). They have been resized to (2% Relative to original picture size) to fit in a 3.63 cell width. This fits approximately 3 screenshots per portrait/letter size paper. For the most part, they look fine on the screen (100% zoom). I would like to know if there is anything that I can do to regain the original crispness and still keep this size

To answer your question about the practice of resizing screenshots: The target for this particular documentation is Desktop Engineers, who have a 95% familiarity with the system. These screenshots are intended to be a peripheral cue to stepped- out procedures. These are all window screenshots, such as: Explorer tree hierarchy, Splash screens, pop-ups..., which convey proportion size on their own.

Thanks
I really appreciate your response!

 

[Word Heretic]

G'day KellyG <[email protected]>,

Not on screen - but in print they should be fine

Steve Hudson - Word Heretic
Want a hyperlinked index? S/W R&D? See WordHeretic.com

steve from wordheretic.com (Email replies require payment)


KellyG reckoned: