How to capture screen shot

Julia,

Read my post above. Windows Snapshot Maker is easy to use: just launch the program when you are ready to make a snapshot, click on the top left corner of the region to be snapped, then the bottom right corner, then on the "Save image ..." button. That's all! A typical stock chart file (in PNG or GIF format) is about 14 KB in size.

Cheers, Staybaker.

Thanks, Staybaker.

Just trying something out below.

Julia

Well, how easy was that. Just clicked on the "Save" option on the actual screen in the ASX website.

All very well as long as the chart comes from there!

Thank you to everyone who has offered suggestions.

Julia

Julia said:

Well, how easy was that. Just clicked on the "Save" option on the actual screen in the ASX website.

All very well as long as the chart comes from there!

Thank you to everyone who has offered suggestions.

Julia

Click to expand...

That looks great Julia, now for your next challenge...try to capture it without saving it directly and then crop it to look like the image you just posted.
We'll help you out.

RichKid said:

That looks great Julia, now for your next challenge...try to capture it without saving it directly and then crop it to look like the image you just posted.
We'll help you out.

Click to expand...

Rich

Kind of you to take on my technological incompetence.

I can do the following:

Press Print Screen
(incidentally, someone said to reduce the size of the image before trying to capture it. I have no idea how to do that.)
Open Paint
Press Ctrl-V
Then I think I've selected just the chart with the "Select" tool but then when I've saved it I get the whole screen rather than just the chart.
What am I doing wrong? Must be using the "Select" thing wrongly.

Can you explain how I can see what is captured without saving it?

Next question: why would I want to do the above if I can satisfactorily post a chart from either ASX or E-trade doing what I did in the previous post.
That was so easy - much more within my obviously very limited capacity.

Thanks for the help

Julia

Julia said:

(incidentally, someone said to reduce the size of the image before trying to capture it. I have no idea how to do that.)

Click to expand...

Julia,

If you go to http://www.irfanview.com/. and download the free version it will allow you to resize your images and then re-save the image once you have resized it. I guess you really need to spend a little time getting familiar with the program , but it shouldnt be too hard.

As for image capturing , i use screenhunter www.wisdom-soft.com/products/screenhunter.htm ,as with anything the free version isnt as good as the full version but it should get you started.

And remember....

Julia said:

Rich

Kind of you to take on my technological incompetence.

I can do the following:

Press Print Screen
(incidentally, someone said to reduce the size of the image before trying to capture it. I have no idea how to do that.)
Open Paint
Press Ctrl-V
....

Click to expand...

Ok, excellent, almost there. Now time for the next step as you will have to cut out the chart and discard the other stuff around it, so we have to crop it to get rid of the other stuff. Lots of words here but really only a few simple steps.
(you now have a whole screen capture on your canvas- remember you can scroll down or sideways to reveal more of your capture).

1. Left click on any one of the buttons in the toolbar (columns on the far left), this will get rid of that annoying four sided arrows thingy which helps you shift the whole image.
2. Now left click on the 'Select' tool button (which is a dotted rectangle, top row of the menu bar to your left, second column) and click on your image (you will see a cross hair).
3. Now left click on the image and drag the borders (which appear), to surround the area you want (in this case just the chart), you can adjust the border by dragging. You can just click again to move the crosshairs to start again. (use 'undo' if you have any problems)
4. Once the area you want to keep has been selected you can right click (while keeping the pointer within the are selected) and choose cut with the mouse. Now the image you cut is saved to your clipboard, ready for pasting....

5. Right click again on the canvas and click on 'select all', then hit delete. This will leave a clear canvas for you to (you guessed it!) paste the image you saved on the clipboard.
6. Right click and select paste.

Now save it and will take it again from there in our next post.

Be confident and fiddle with it, you have nothing to lose.

get back to me or someone else here and ask any q's, do the above several time swith different images to feel comfortable.

Can you explain how I can see what is captured without saving it?

Next question: why would I want to do the above if I can satisfactorily post a chart from either ASX or E-trade doing what I did in the previous post.
That was so easy - much more within my obviously very limited capacity.

Thanks for the help

Julia

Click to expand...

Not sure how to view it, I think it's saved to the clipboard and there's a clipboard viewer in the Start menu's accessories sub-menu (or whatever??!!) but I can't find it now .

ASX charts are basic and useless imo for most things, wont let you take the easy way out, sorry, so get with the program Julia! The process will become mechanical and very fast once you've done it a few times. We'll show you some whizbang stuff and might even convert you to a renegade Chartist, good things take time. It's like learning to paint, why scrawl when you can create a masterpiece!?

OK, Rich,

Good, clear directions. I have followed them.

Tried sending the resulting small looking chart. Again get told that file is too large.

Await further instructions!

Julia

Julia said:

OK, Rich,

Good, clear directions. I have followed them.

Tried sending the resulting small looking chart. Again get told that file is too large.

Await further instructions!

Julia

Click to expand...

No probs, did you save the file as a .gif type file when you saved after editing?

The file size is not the main problem here as that can be fixed easily in IrfanView.

What was the file size quoted when you tried to attach it on ASF- a figure is shown, try attaching it again if you don't recall? Keep at it, it's the first few goes that are hard.

After you've done that re-read this thread again to go over issues you may not have paid attention to the first time around, it all helps.

Second attempt in order to see file size. Yes, I did save it as gif.

It says the limit is 800 x 800
My file is 1024 x 768

Julia

Julia,

The numbers ASF gave you - 1024 X 780 - aren't talking about file size. They are to do with the number of pixels in the image, which is directly related to the size of the picture when it's displayed on a screen.

You need to find a way to make the picture you want to upload smaller. Prof Frink uses the crop tool in Paint (see post in this thread). If your version of Paint has the tool and the options he describes, then that's probably your easiest option.

Battle on. It does all get easier. Truly

Cheers,

Ghoti

Hi Julia

A pixel can be thought of as a unit of length.

Therefore your 1024 x 768 pixel picture means that it is 1024 pixels wide and 768 pixels high (similar to someone saying a photo is 6 inches x 4 inches)

If you need to make your image smaller then the cropping tool suggested earlier is the easiest way.

I have an old version of Microsoft Paint that doesn't have a dedicated cropping tool but it does allow you to reduce your image size by deleting portions of the image from the right and bottom sides of your image.

In the 'Image' pulldown menu there is an option called 'Attributes' which allows you to change the length and width of your image but only from the right and botton boundaries

If you want to reduce your image size from the left or top boundaries you then first have to flip your image horizontally or vertically by selecting the 'flip/rotate' option under the 'Image' pulldown menu. But remember to then flip the image back before saving the reduced image.

Paint will do what you need but is cumbersome to use (at least the old version I have is)

A while ago I bought Arcsoft's Photostudio software which easily meets my needs.

If interested you can download a trial version (for about 20 days max from memory) from here

Photostudio has all the main photo editing and enhancing tools (like cropping, resizing/resampling etc etc) so it might be worth looking at if you need software to edit and/or enhance digital images.

Good luck and hope this helps.

cheers

bullmarket

ghotib said:

Julia,

The numbers ASF gave you - 1024 X 780 - aren't talking about file size. They are to do with the number of pixels in the image, which is directly related to the size of the picture when it's displayed on a screen.

You need to find a way to make the picture you want to upload smaller. Prof Frink uses the crop tool in Paint (see post in this thread). If your version of Paint has the tool and the options he describes, then that's probably your easiest option.

Battle on. It does all get easier. Truly

Cheers,

Ghoti

Click to expand...

Julia,
Yes, you can crop it as Ghoti says (the first pixel figure is the width of the image (in this sense, a pixel is like a unit of measure, eg centimetres) so you may lose some of the image if it's quite broad).

IMO best option for you is to open the file in Irfan View:
1) Go to the 'Image' menu then select 'Resize/Resample'
2) Under 'Set New Size' type in '800' as the width, the default option ('preserve aspect ratio') automatically preseves the proportions of the image so it just shrinks. (btw, note the other options on the right for particular dimensions).
3) Hit the 'ok' button and that's it.

Again, check GP's post on Irfan if you have any trouble.

Looking forward to your work, don't stop at just one....

(MS Paint also has other options re pixels/resolution and dimensions apart from the crop option but Irfan is best imo to start with).

I don't know much about the terminology for this stuff so please correct me if I'm wrong guys!

And since you're such a good student Julia you could summarise the main steps in about half a dozen numbered points and post it here, that will help you, and more importantly we can see where you are going wrong and can provide a simpler guide. (Only the essentials)

So for example

1) Capture image (hit 'PrtScn/SysRq' button).
2) Transfer image to MS Paint (ie paste into a blank doc)
3) Crop the image using the Select tool.......etc

You've done brilliantly well so far so keep at it Julia, I expect you'll be teaching us a few things before long!!

OK. So what you're all saying is that in order to be able to post the image onto the forum, I need to download Irfanview or similar software?

I'm able to successfully email the image now - it's just the ASF bit that's a problem.

Joe's option of just emailing him the image and him resizing it looks awfully appealing from here!

I think my enthusiasm for this whole project is flagging somewhat.

I'm not usually a fan for smilies but this one feels appropriate right now -

Julia

Julia said:

OK. So what you're all saying is that in order to be able to post the image onto the forum, I need to download Irfanview or similar software?

I'm able to successfully email the image now - it's just the ASF bit that's a problem.

Joe's option of just emailing him the image and him resizing it looks awfully appealing from here!

I think my enthusiasm for this whole project is flagging somewhat.

I'm not usually a fan for smilies but this one feels appropriate right now -

Julia

Click to expand...

Julia,

You're almost there, hang in there.

MS Paint will do it if you have it, but you do need some sort of graphics/ photo editing program to do any editing if you don't have Paint.

To make it easier (this is following on from about two posts ago- ie you're at the stage where you have the image but it's too big) open the image in MSPaint and choose 'attributes' under the 'Image' menu, then change the dimensions down to 800. That should do it.

www.fatprophets.com.au allows you to save charts as you did with the ASX site by just right clicking, the fatprophets charts are much better and the file format is small too. (I shouldn't have mentioned it but that's probably the easiest way to show a chart, I hope you'll try to do the editing anyhow).

Julia said:

OK. So what you're all saying is that in order to be able to post the image onto the forum, I need to download Irfanview or similar software?

I'm able to successfully email the image now - it's just the ASF bit that's a problem.

Joe's option of just emailing him the image and him resizing it looks awfully appealing from here!

I think my enthusiasm for this whole project is flagging somewhat.

I'm not usually a fan for smilies but this one feels appropriate right now -

Julia

Click to expand...

have u tried making the photo smaller? eg in Paint the "-" rectangle, highlight what u want and right click cut/crop? then paste into new blank page? Or u cna use other software like photoeditor

Also dont need to upload to ASF to post pictures

http://www.imageshack.us

go there upload your picture, then get the "direct url". Paste it into your msg here, highlight url then "insert image" tag it, ie add

thx

MS

Julia, I'm guessing that the image dimensions you posted (1024 by 768) are probably the same as your screen dimensions - in other words, your image is of the whole screen, and hasn't been properly cropped yet.

(And I can't help commenting (again) that if use Windows Snapshot Maker you wouldn't have to worry about copying, pasting, cropping, reducing, etc.. You'd just run the program, select the top left corner, the bottom right corner, and hit "Save". Still, it's all educational, and I hope you keep at it and arrive at a method you are happy with.)

Cheers, Staybaker.

Staybaker said:

Julia, I'm guessing that the image dimensions you posted (1024 by 768) are probably the same as your screen dimensions - in other words, your image is of the whole screen, and hasn't been properly cropped yet.

(And I can't help commenting (again) that if use Windows Snapshot Maker you wouldn't have to worry about copying, pasting, cropping, reducing, etc.. You'd just run the program, select the top left corner, the bottom right corner, and hit "Save". Still, it's all educational, and I hope you keep at it and arrive at a method you are happy with.)

Cheers, Staybaker.

Click to expand...

Hello Staybaker,

Many thanks. I clicked on the "Free Download" of Windows Snapshot Maker, waited more than a minute and nothing happened. ???

Meantime, following your latest directions, Rich, here's my latest attempt:
(holding my breath!)

Julia,

That worked okay, but it would be better if you could crop off all the white space outside the chart. Unfortunately MS Paint doesn't seem to be able to do that.

Irfanview does it easily though

Cheers,
GP