printing computer screen shots

[Jimmy Clay]

I have a general question about printing screen shots that have been
capture using a print capture utility. I'm hoping someone in this
group might
have some experience doing this The utility I've been
experimenting with is PrintKey 2000. Basically my question is if
there's anything that can be done to improve the quality of the screen
shot when it is printed in book form.

From my new understanding of DPI, and from experimenting, I can see no

advantage of changing the DPI of the screen shot to 300 DPI. Doing
that will
decrease the size of the original graphic, and it will then have to be
increased in size,
and the image comes out looking the same as it did before changing the
DPI.
So is there anything else I should think about doing. Or is it
basically all that I can do is get
the screen shot I want and paste it as is into Word, create my PDF
file, then
hope for the best when the publisher prints the book.

Are there any advantages of change the DPI 300 besides the way the
graphic looks, perhaps changing it to 300 DPI makes it look smoother
in print?

Thanks

 

[Chuck]

DPI is sort of meaningless when it comes to a monitor display. Pixels, on
the other hand, have everything to do with how large a picture is on a
monitor, and how it will print. Your publisher may have preferred or
mandatory settings to use if you want to optimize picture quality.
(Maximum number of pixels in a picture, etc.)
Having said that--
600DPI minimum is what most decent "office" quality laser B/W printers are
rated at.
A "normal" DPI for inkjets in text mode might be 300-360 or 600-720 for
"quality"
Above that, inkjet drivers start seriously manipulating the data to utilize
the unique printer hardware to produce higher resolutions.

A publisher's system "may" have the ability to print in very high
resolution. If so they will likely tell you what you need to do to utilize
it, (and how much extra its going to cost.)

Word is a word processor, not a layout oriented publising program. You can
reserve/declare areas that will have a picture in them, and print the
pictures later at a different resoluton than word might use.
A digital picture Has a number of pixels, and usually a desired size to be
printed. Application programs and possibly printer drivers can scale the
digital picture up or down as required for the picture to be a certain size
when printed.

If I were doing this sort of thing, I'd likely use something other than
Word. Adobie and Corel come to mind. Adobie costs lots of money, and Corel
has some limits.

 

[Jimmy Clay]

DPI is sort of meaningless when it comes to a monitor display. Pixels, on
the other hand, have everything to do with how large a picture is on a
monitor, and how it will print. Your publisher may have preferred or
mandatory settings to use if you want to optimize picture quality.
(Maximum number of pixels in a picture, etc.)
Having said that--
600DPI minimum is what most decent "office" quality laser B/W printers are
rated at.
A "normal" DPI for inkjets in text mode might be 300-360 or 600-720 for
"quality"
Above that, inkjet drivers start seriously manipulating the data to utilize
the unique printer hardware to produce higher resolutions.

A publisher's system "may" have the ability to print in very high
resolution. If so they will likely tell you what you need to do to utilize
it, (and how much extra its going to cost.)

Word is a word processor, not a layout oriented publising program. You can
reserve/declare areas that will have a picture in them, and print the
pictures later at a different resoluton than word might use.
A digital picture Has a number of pixels, and usually a desired size to be
printed. Application programs and possibly printer drivers can scale the
digital picture up or down as required for the picture to be a certain size
when printed.

If I were doing this sort of thing, I'd likely use something other than
Word. Adobie and Corel come to mind. Adobie costs lots of money, and Corel
has some limits.

Thanks for the response. My question seems to be one that most people
are unsure of. What I'm doing is putting together a manual that will
be printed on a high resolution printer. The manual is about a
program we use and will have a lot of screen shots that will be
cropped and have arrows pointing at the the things on the screen that
I'm writing about. I'm trying to make it very, very easy. But having
no experience with printing manuals at high resolutions, I'm not sure
how the screen shots will print. I've been instructed to use 300 DPI
on all my graphics. When I change the DPI on a screen shot it of
course shrinks in the document. To make the screen shot readable, I
have to re-enlarge it, and this enlargement gives me a graphic that
looks just like the what I started with (before changing the DPI to
300).

So I guess my question is if there's any benefit in change the screen
shot to a graphic with a DPI of 300. I don't believe it makes the
graphic itself clearer, at least not on the computer screen, and not
on my Lexmark 5150, but I was thinking on a high quality printer at a
print shop, the 300 DPI might make the graphic print smoother (even
though its not sharper). By smoother I mean that because the printer
will be printing at 300 DPI instead of say 96 all the dots will be
closer together. But I'm not 100% sure I understand the process,
although I have been working hard to do so.

But I just noticed that PrintKey 2000, which is the program I'm using
to make the screen shots, can save the files in EMF and WMF formats,
which I think or vector formats. If I insert the file in my document
using one of those types of files, do I even need to worry about
DPI's?

 

[gr]

Thanks for the response. My question seems to be one that most people
are unsure of. What I'm doing is putting together a manual that will
be printed on a high resolution printer. The manual is about a
program we use and will have a lot of screen shots that will be
cropped and have arrows pointing at the the things on the screen that
I'm writing about. I'm trying to make it very, very easy. But having
no experience with printing manuals at high resolutions, I'm not sure
how the screen shots will print. I've been instructed to use 300 DPI
on all my graphics. When I change the DPI on a screen shot it of
course shrinks in the document. To make the screen shot readable, I
have to re-enlarge it, and this enlargement gives me a graphic that
looks just like the what I started with (before changing the DPI to
300).

So I guess my question is if there's any benefit in change the screen
shot to a graphic with a DPI of 300. I don't believe it makes the
graphic itself clearer, at least not on the computer screen, and not
on my Lexmark 5150, but I was thinking on a high quality printer at a
print shop, the 300 DPI might make the graphic print smoother (even
though its not sharper). By smoother I mean that because the printer
will be printing at 300 DPI instead of say 96 all the dots will be
closer together. But I'm not 100% sure I understand the process,
although I have been working hard to do so.

But I just noticed that PrintKey 2000, which is the program I'm using
to make the screen shots, can save the files in EMF and WMF formats,
which I think or vector formats. If I insert the file in my document
using one of those types of files, do I even need to worry about
DPI's?

Here is what I do;
1) The goal is to get a picture that is the right size on the final output.
2) If printing directly (IE; no auto sizing) the size of the output will
follow the DPI of the output device.
Example: a picture 600 pixels wide on a 600DPI printer will be 1 inch
wide. On a 1200 DPI printer it will be 0.5 inch wide.
3)Look at the actual number of pixels in the picture you are using
(normally shown in Properties) and compare this to the printer DPI.
4) Ignore screen DPI and work with the actual number of pixels.
gr

 

[Jimmy Clay]

Here is what I do;
1) The goal is to get a picture that is the right size on the final output.
2) If printing directly (IE; no auto sizing) the size of the output will
follow the DPI of the output device.
Example: a picture 600 pixels wide on a 600DPI printer will be 1 inch
wide. On a 1200 DPI printer it will be 0.5 inch wide.
3)Look at the actual number of pixels in the picture you are using
(normally shown in Properties) and compare this to the printer DPI.
4) Ignore screen DPI and work with the actual number of pixels.
gr

Thanks for the help. I guess I should add that the screen clip will
be pasted into a Word Document 2007, then saved as a PDF file, and
then printed.

 

[Jerry]

I have a general question about printing screen shots that have been
capture using a print capture utility. I'm hoping someone in this
group might
have some experience doing this The utility I've been
experimenting with is PrintKey 2000. Basically my question is if
there's anything that can be done to improve the quality of the screen
shot when it is printed in book form.


advantage of changing the DPI of the screen shot to 300 DPI. Doing
that will
decrease the size of the original graphic, and it will then have to be
increased in size,
and the image comes out looking the same as it did before changing the
DPI.
So is there anything else I should think about doing. Or is it
basically all that I can do is get
the screen shot I want and paste it as is into Word, create my PDF
file, then
hope for the best when the publisher prints the book.

Are there any advantages of change the DPI 300 besides the way the
graphic looks, perhaps changing it to 300 DPI makes it look smoother
in print?

Thanks

Do you really need a capture utility? Have you experimented with the
Print Screen key? Hit PrintScreen, paste into Word, format as needed,
see how it looks when you print it.

Jerry

 

[gr]

Thanks for the help. I guess I should add that the screen clip will
be pasted into a Word Document 2007, then saved as a PDF file, and
then printed.

I played around a little today and found that at least in Word 2000,
when a jpg is imported, Word will auto size based on the DPI contained
in the file (use Irfanview, then File Information to see the DPI
specified in a file). If the file is large and bigger than a page, Word
will make the picture smaller to fit a page. But, if you copy a picture,
then resize withing Word, the file actually stays the same size, but is
displayed smaller in word (I had a 5mb jpg in a file 3 times, with sizes
from full page to small, and the Word file size was 15mb).
In actual printout, the size of the picture that Word defaults to (if I
don''t resize it) is to print the picture at the size for 300 dpi. I
haven't look at what converting to a PDF would do. My output was all on
a Laserjet 4100.
gr

 

[Arthur Entlich]

Hi Jimmy,

Sorry it took me a few days to get to this, but it was a busy weekend.

I might be able to help you with this.

Screen capture is a bit tricky, because it literally captures the raster
graphic on the screen. Most screens raster at between 72 and about 120
pixels per inch depending upon the resolution of the screen and how you
have it set up.

There are several factors involved, and I am not familiar with the
capture program you are using.

Also, I don't know what you are trying to acquire, and how it is being
generated. The first thing I would try to do is to maximize the
resolution of the image as it appears on the screen such that the
capture program has as high resolution a raster image as possible to
collect the data from.

So, I would set your screen resolution the largest your monitor can
display. Depending upon the monitor screen size and size ratios (height
versus width) and the technology, and the amount of memory available to
your graphics card, this could be up to 1600 x 1200 pixels (1080p HD
goes to 1920 x 1080 pixels, but that's a TV standard). Anyway, go to
your display settings and maximize the resolution your monitor and
videocard allow. You may have a choice of higher resolutions if you
can sacrifice number of colors. For high resolution printing, assuming
the images are charts or text related, you can get away with 16 (if you
don't need gradients) or 256 colors if that gives you higher resolution.
If you are needing photographic reproduction, you can still get away
with 16 bit color, if that will allow you increased resolution.

You may then also need to set a larger typeface in the display menu
so the screen image fills the screen.

After doing this, see if your screen captures are any larger or higher
resolution when you capture them. If this doesn't work, you may need to
use a different capture program, or you may need to take other steps,
described as follows.

If you are stuck with a capture that is relatively lower resolution than
you need, you will need to upsample the image to make it larger without
it becoming "blockier" as the pixel sizes expand.

If your capture program gives you the option, save these captures in TIF
or PDF or very high quality JPEG for now. Standard JPEG will tend to
compress the images to smaller file sizes, but in so doing will add
artifacts that will become even more obvious when you upsample. Once
you have captured the image in the largest least "lossy" manner you can,
you will need to load it into a program that has good upsampling
features. Most image manipulation programs do this well. The more
expensive ones often do the best job, but even something like Irfanview,
which is a free download, has abilities to upsample reasonably. If
you have access to Photoshop or Elements or even PhotoDeluxe, they all
have great engines for this. But in Irfanview go to "image">
Resize/Resample, and use that menu to enlarge the image by whatever
percentage you need to. To figure that out, look at the size the image
is in the resize/resample display, and divide the number of pixels by
300 (DPI). That will tell you how many inches the image will appear at
300 dpi on the page.

Let's work in IrfanView, since it is a Freeware product. Let's say, the
image is showing it is 1280 x 1024 pixels in the resize/resample menu.
That would mean if that image was printed at 300 dpi, it would print at
about 4.25" x 3.4", but keep in mind that's based upon the full image
size, so if there is a lot of background color or white, the image in
the center will be smaller still. Let's say you need the image to be
8.5" wide by 6.8" top to bottom. To make it such at 300 dpi, you then
need to enlarge it by 200%, or you can indicate the exact pixels you
wish in the menu. On the other side of the menu you have a choice of
resampling or resizing the image. Select resampling, and then select
the method. The slowest method will give the best result, but you will
need to see how long it takes with your computer and decide which method
of resampling is efficient for you.

That process will slightly soften the image, because it is interpolating
the addition pixels it is creating, so you may wish to have sharpening
done after resampling, which is an option in that same menu on the left
side. Try it both ways and see which looks best when displayed at the
real 300 dpi size (use a ruler and zoom to make the image on the screen
the size it need to be at 300 dpi once you have resampled) If the image
is suppose to now be 8.5" wide, make it that large on the monitor screen
and look at it. It will be somewhat more soft than in the printed version.

Now store the image in a high quality jpeg or tiff, depending upon what
your publisher wants, and try printing a copy on your inkjet or other
printer to get a sense of the quality. Hopefully, it is up to the
quality you need.

Let me know how this goes for you, as I may be able to give you further
help if you are still stuck.

Art

After that is finished, take a look at it on your screen is "real size"
(where one inch on the screen is one inch in the real world

 

[Jimmy Clay]

Hi Jimmy,

Sorry it took me a few days to get to this, but it was a busy weekend.

I might be able to help you with this.

Screen capture is a bit tricky, because it literally captures the raster
graphic on the screen. Most screens raster at between 72 and about 120
pixels per inch depending upon the resolution of the screen and how you
have it set up.

There are several factors involved, and I am not familiar with the
capture program you are using.

Also, I don't know what you are trying to acquire, and how it is being
generated. The first thing I would try to do is to maximize the
resolution of the image as it appears on the screen such that the
capture program has as high resolution a raster image as possible to
collect the data from.

So, I would set your screen resolution the largest your monitor can
display. Depending upon the monitor screen size and size ratios (height
versus width) and the technology, and the amount of memory available to
your graphics card, this could be up to 1600 x 1200 pixels (1080p HD
goes to 1920 x 1080 pixels, but that's a TV standard). Anyway, go to
your display settings and maximize the resolution your monitor and
videocard allow. You may have a choice of higher resolutions if you
can sacrifice number of colors. For high resolution printing, assuming
the images are charts or text related, you can get away with 16 (if you
don't need gradients) or 256 colors if that gives you higher resolution.
If you are needing photographic reproduction, you can still get away
with 16 bit color, if that will allow you increased resolution.

You may then also need to set a larger typeface in the display menu
so the screen image fills the screen.

After doing this, see if your screen captures are any larger or higher
resolution when you capture them. If this doesn't work, you may need to
use a different capture program, or you may need to take other steps,
described as follows.

If you are stuck with a capture that is relatively lower resolution than
you need, you will need to upsample the image to make it larger without
it becoming "blockier" as the pixel sizes expand.

If your capture program gives you the option, save these captures in TIF
or PDF or very high quality JPEG for now. Standard JPEG will tend to
compress the images to smaller file sizes, but in so doing will add
artifacts that will become even more obvious when you upsample. Once
you have captured the image in the largest least "lossy" manner you can,
you will need to load it into a program that has good upsampling
features. Most image manipulation programs do this well. The more
expensive ones often do the best job, but even something like Irfanview,
which is a free download, has abilities to upsample reasonably. If
you have access to Photoshop or Elements or even PhotoDeluxe, they all
have great engines for this. But in Irfanview go to "image">
Resize/Resample, and use that menu to enlarge the image by whatever
percentage you need to. To figure that out, look at the size the image
is in the resize/resample display, and divide the number of pixels by
300 (DPI). That will tell you how many inches the image will appear at
300 dpi on the page.

Let's work in IrfanView, since it is a Freeware product. Let's say, the
image is showing it is 1280 x 1024 pixels in the resize/resample menu.
That would mean if that image was printed at 300 dpi, it would print at
about 4.25" x 3.4", but keep in mind that's based upon the full image
size, so if there is a lot of background color or white, the image in
the center will be smaller still. Let's say you need the image to be
8.5" wide by 6.8" top to bottom. To make it such at 300 dpi, you then
need to enlarge it by 200%, or you can indicate the exact pixels you
wish in the menu. On the other side of the menu you have a choice of
resampling or resizing the image. Select resampling, and then select
the method. The slowest method will give the best result, but you will
need to see how long it takes with your computer and decide which method
of resampling is efficient for you.

That process will slightly soften the image, because it is interpolating
the addition pixels it is creating, so you may wish to have sharpening
done after resampling, which is an option in that same menu on the left
side. Try it both ways and see which looks best when displayed at the
real 300 dpi size (use a ruler and zoom to make the image on the screen
the size it need to be at 300 dpi once you have resampled) If the image
is suppose to now be 8.5" wide, make it that large on the monitor screen
and look at it. It will be somewhat more soft than in the printed version.

Now store the image in a high quality jpeg or tiff, depending upon what
your publisher wants, and try printing a copy on your inkjet or other
printer to get a sense of the quality. Hopefully, it is up to the
quality you need.

Let me know how this goes for you, as I may be able to give you further
help if you are still stuck.

Art

After that is finished, take a look at it on your screen is "real size"
(where one inch on the screen is one inch in the real world

Hey thanks for the help. I'm going to print out your response and try
all those things.

To answer the previous responder, the great thing about PrintKey 2000,
or other programs like them, is that it makes the capture so easy,
especially getting a screen shot of just the part of the screen you
need. And you can save them in different formats, altough Printkey
does not do TIFF.

 

[Jerry]

To answer the previous responder, the great thing about PrintKey 2000,
or other programs like them, is that it makes the capture so easy,
especially getting a screen shot of just the part of the screen you
need.

You can capture the active window, rather than the whole screen, by
holding down the ALT key while hitting Print Screen.

Jerry

 

[Jimmy Clay]

Hi Jimmy,

Sorry it took me a few days to get to this, but it was a busy weekend.

I might be able to help you with this.

Screen capture is a bit tricky, because it literally captures the raster
graphic on the screen. Most screens raster at between 72 and about 120
pixels per inch depending upon the resolution of the screen and how you
have it set up.

There are several factors involved, and I am not familiar with the
capture program you are using.

Also, I don't know what you are trying to acquire, and how it is being
generated. The first thing I would try to do is to maximize the
resolution of the image as it appears on the screen such that the
capture program has as high resolution a raster image as possible to
collect the data from.

So, I would set your screen resolution the largest your monitor can
display. Depending upon the monitor screen size and size ratios (height
versus width) and the technology, and the amount of memory available to
your graphics card, this could be up to 1600 x 1200 pixels (1080p HD
goes to 1920 x 1080 pixels, but that's a TV standard). Anyway, go to
your display settings and maximize the resolution your monitor and
videocard allow. You may have a choice of higher resolutions if you
can sacrifice number of colors. For high resolution printing, assuming
the images are charts or text related, you can get away with 16 (if you
don't need gradients) or 256 colors if that gives you higher resolution.
If you are needing photographic reproduction, you can still get away
with 16 bit color, if that will allow you increased resolution.

You may then also need to set a larger typeface in the display menu
so the screen image fills the screen.

After doing this, see if your screen captures are any larger or higher
resolution when you capture them. If this doesn't work, you may need to
use a different capture program, or you may need to take other steps,
described as follows.

If you are stuck with a capture that is relatively lower resolution than
you need, you will need to upsample the image to make it larger without
it becoming "blockier" as the pixel sizes expand.

If your capture program gives you the option, save these captures in TIF
or PDF or very high quality JPEG for now. Standard JPEG will tend to
compress the images to smaller file sizes, but in so doing will add
artifacts that will become even more obvious when you upsample. Once
you have captured the image in the largest least "lossy" manner you can,
you will need to load it into a program that has good upsampling
features. Most image manipulation programs do this well. The more
expensive ones often do the best job, but even something like Irfanview,
which is a free download, has abilities to upsample reasonably. If
you have access to Photoshop or Elements or even PhotoDeluxe, they all
have great engines for this. But in Irfanview go to "image">
Resize/Resample, and use that menu to enlarge the image by whatever
percentage you need to. To figure that out, look at the size the image
is in the resize/resample display, and divide the number of pixels by
300 (DPI). That will tell you how many inches the image will appear at
300 dpi on the page.

Let's work in IrfanView, since it is a Freeware product. Let's say, the
image is showing it is 1280 x 1024 pixels in the resize/resample menu.
That would mean if that image was printed at 300 dpi, it would print at
about 4.25" x 3.4", but keep in mind that's based upon the full image
size, so if there is a lot of background color or white, the image in
the center will be smaller still. Let's say you need the image to be
8.5" wide by 6.8" top to bottom. To make it such at 300 dpi, you then
need to enlarge it by 200%, or you can indicate the exact pixels you
wish in the menu. On the other side of the menu you have a choice of
resampling or resizing the image. Select resampling, and then select
the method. The slowest method will give the best result, but you will
need to see how long it takes with your computer and decide which method
of resampling is efficient for you.

That process will slightly soften the image, because it is interpolating
the addition pixels it is creating, so you may wish to have sharpening
done after resampling, which is an option in that same menu on the left
side. Try it both ways and see which looks best when displayed at the
real 300 dpi size (use a ruler and zoom to make the image on the screen
the size it need to be at 300 dpi once you have resampled) If the image
is suppose to now be 8.5" wide, make it that large on the monitor screen
and look at it. It will be somewhat more soft than in the printed version.

Now store the image in a high quality jpeg or tiff, depending upon what
your publisher wants, and try printing a copy on your inkjet or other
printer to get a sense of the quality. Hopefully, it is up to the
quality you need.

Let me know how this goes for you, as I may be able to give you further
help if you are still stuck.

Art

After that is finished, take a look at it on your screen is "real size"
(where one inch on the screen is one inch in the real world

Inspired by your response, I did more experimenting. And I'm feeling
pretty good about this. My display settings were already set to the
max, so I couldn't use that idea.

But the other ideas were very helpful and I did an experiment that
makes me feel pretty good. I took a screen shot of Word 2007
paragraph dialogue box and copied it into Irfanview. The original box
is 4"w X 5.5"h. I reduced it to 2.75"w X 3.83"h and did not change
the dpi. I took the result and copied it into Word.

I copied again the same screen shot and pasted it into Irfanview.
This time I changed the DPI to 300 which made the size too small to
useful, so I then increased the size to 2.75"w X 3.83"h. In both cases
the the Resampling was set to the Lanczos filter. I took this second
screen shot and copied it next to the first in Word. Then I printed it
on my home computer using its best print quality.

The difference between the two samples were obvious. The first was
very blurry and almost unreadable, and the second was much sharper and
readable.

So this seems to answer my question. It is important to change the
DPI to 300 and then resize it using the best resampling method.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Arthur Entlich]

Hi Jimmy,

Great to hear both that you were able to follow my somewhat cryptic
instructions, and also that they helped to resolve the problem for you.

Best of luck with your publication.

Art