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Gregory wrote:
> [...]
> you can have and image appear 640 x 480 pixels on screen but out put at
> 50% or 400% of its size without any noticeable loss of clarity.
>[...]
> I routinely use tiff for my screen caps (I use Quirk for DTP and it
> seems happiest with tiffs). As I layout my pages I check to see about
> what size my image should be (sometimes even using my old proportional
> scale), then set the document (output) size in Photoshop, being sure to
> uncheck the re-sample image option. And, Viola, perfectly legible
> screen caps at any size.
There are probably more people here using tools
like Word and Snag-it than high-end DTP tools like
Quark and Photoshop.
For Word users, I find that pasting unmodified
screen caps into Word and then rescaling gives
excellent results, but if I have to modify them
first in a paint program and then insert them as
files into Word, any resizing done after capture
degrades the image quality.
So what you want to do is set up the screen
capture in as close to the final size as possible
*before* capture. This is good discipline anyway,
because it "reminds" you to eliminate dead space
from the window or dialog (assuming GUI-osity here).
I've seen way too many over-sized screen caps
consisting mainly of dead air.
If you want to do your reader a favor, and produce
snappy-looking pages, keep your screen caps as small
and as focussed as possible within the bounds of
readability (if reading the screen cap is really necessary,
which isn't always the case). And (paraphrasing Strunk)
omit needless pixels!
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