Taking a picture (screenshot) of overnight data

In another topic that was getting pretty long Activa v Swift Statistics Janelle asked "how do you make a picture file of a session?" She was talking about taking a picture of a graph in her Silverlining software program when she looks at her overnight data.

Janelle, when I'm in the Encore or Silverlining program, looking at the screen I want to capture as a picture, I do this first to take a "screen shot":

Leftclick the part of the session screen you want to snap a picture of...just to be sure that window is "active"....then hold down Alt key + press the Print Screen key - up near the scroll lock and pause keys. You won't see anything happen when you do that, but a "picture" of the screen is saved and can be pasted into another program.

I then open a program I have called PaintShop Pro (Adobe Photoshop would work, too) and click "Edit" - "Paste as new image".

Bingo, the screenshot appears. I can work on it there to crop the sides if needed, leaving only the pertinent part; for example, to leave only the graph itself showing in the picture. Every little bit of extraneous stuff you can cut off the sides of a screen shot helps when it comes time to deal with reducing the picture size if necessary.

Then I reduce the size to something reasonable to post. A size that won't run off the sides of the screen in a message. Save it as a "jpg". Put the jpg up on a website and either:

1. Put the URL to the picture in a post -- people can click to go to the website and see it there. If you need to use a really big picture in order to better see details on graphs etc., this is actually the best way to post it; up on a website, instead of in the message itself.

or

2. Use the "Img" button while posting to put the picture in the message itself. Again, you have to include a URL to the jpg. You can't simply "link" to a picture stored on your own computer. The picture has to be stored on a website. It's best to keep the picture size reasonable so the picture doesn't stretch wayyyy over to the right side, making all the text messages in that thread scroll off the side too.

There are probably easier ways to do it. That's just how I go about it.

RG,

What web site can you post a picture to?

Dunno, Lori. I have my own domain - tnlc.com. There are lots of free websites available, but not all will work for letting you put a picture in a message here using a link to them. Any free one would be fine for posting a clickable URL to the picture, though, I think.

Many ISP's offer free webspace to their customers. Check with your Internet Service Provider or Google for "free web page". There are tons of free ones out there. They usually stick a little advertising thingie on your webpage.

Thanks, RG. I am on AOL and I think they do offer free web space. I'm going to look into that now. As usual, thank you for your help.

Don't you ever get tired of helping people??? No need to answer that one; we already know the answer.

If anyone wants a fantastic freeware image viewer capture slideshow thumbnail converter video-viewer etc: etc: etc: etc: program.

Google & download irfanview

I have the full gamut of image processing programs (Photopaint, photoshop, etc: etc:) etc: etc: incl 3d tools & animation tools video creation & manipulation tools so when I praise a freeware program it has to be damned good.

Irfan is a Norwegian who developed his image viewer years ago - over time he just keeps improving it (seems the long winters give him something creative to do other than drinking frozen schnapps & eating rollmops & bread )
## UPDATE:
Turns out Irfan is actually a Bosnian - not sure where I got it from that he was Norwegian
##


If you follow Rested girl's procedure to capture the screen image, you then open irfanview & use the Edit-Paste command to get the capture image. You can then save it as *.bmp or *.gif or *.jpg etc: etc: etc: It will even do compression & image resizing.

If anyone does download irfanview pls post what you think of it back here.

Cheers

DSM
( irfanview fan )

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CPAPopedia Keywords Contained In This Post (Click For Definition): video

DSM,
Always looking for great shareware, so I just downloaded it. Are you saying this takes the place of MS Paint or Adobe Photo Shop or it does far more than any of them and is easier to use?

I guess I should read the help page and see what it can do. But I did download it. Thanks.

Sleepless on LI wrote:DSM,
Always looking for great shareware, so I just downloaded it. Are you saying this takes the place of MS Paint or Adobe Photo Shop or it does far more than any of them and is easier to use?

I guess I should read the help page and see what it can do. But I did download it. Thanks.

Lori,

For image capture saving reformatting etc: it is the equal of the others. For doing intricate image work with layers & transformations, the others are the proper product. I got excited about it when I found it did 80% of the typical stuff I do & cost nothing & did the job so well.

Cheers

DSM

Irfan's home page = http://www.irfanview.com/index.htm

##UPDATE

irfanview can ...

capture images (whole screen or a foreground window etc:)
crop images, cut selections from images, cut chunks out of images, paste into images
write text on images, change color depth, brigtness contrast etc:
manipulate images (flip vert, flip horiz, resize image, rotate any angle)
special effects (emboss, swirl, pixelate, many more)
create thmbnails, create slideshows, view video clips of most types
Scan in images from a twain scanner
do batch conversions of list of images from one format to another

irfanview also has a lot of plug-ins freely available that do even more

D


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Okay, DSM, going to have to play around with this and see just what this puppy can do...thanks again for the info.

Well, the photo editors that came with my printer wouldn't do as directed, so I just opened up that little program we have all forgotten before the days of Paint Shop, called "Paint", found in the Windows Accesories directory. Worked just find.

dsm wrote:For image capture saving reformatting etc: it is the equal of the others. For doing intricate image work with layers & transformations, the others are the proper product. I got excited about it when I found it did 80% of the typical stuff I do & cost nothing & did the job so well.

If you want a freeware editor that can do the things that PhotoShop can do (work with layers, etc.) then you need to download Gimp http://www.gimp.org

It is to digital pictures what Audacity is to digital audio.

It may be different now, Janelle, but some years ago when I used the "Paint" program that comes with windows, it didn't let you convert a picture to a jpeg (.jpg). I believe that to put a screenshot into a post on the message board, the picture would have to be converted into a .jpg.

However, it doesn't have to be a jpg to put it up on a website, so yes, a picture from "Windows Paint" would work for that purpose.

Paint on XP does convert to many photo extensions

If you are needing somewhere to host your images, http://www.photobucket.com and http://www.imagecave.com/ are quite good (and free). http://www.flickr.com is also free though it's more of a photo-journalling site that just hosting.

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