Sizing an attachment

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I took a Print Screen shot of a window, and wanted to copy it to a post here (just as a test). I got an error message that said ‘file too large’. How do I reduce the size of the screen shot from 768 K bytes to the 100 K byte limit while retaining all of the information?

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First crop it to show ONLY what is needed, then resize it. This can be done with most image editing programs, and the ones that are part of Windows are NOT worth in using. Check the Graphic Applications area for more ideas.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Another option is to use HardCopy to take your screen shots.

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Thanks for the link Francois, I note that it is ware (Oh but ask for a tip!). I’ll give it a go next week.

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I’ve been using it for years and find it very convenient. Just be careful when it is minimized to your system tray, as one of the ‘click’ options is to print a screen shot. I think you can define in the setup what left-click and right-click do, but it is still very easy to find your printer kicking in…

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Thanks Leif, I’ll look out for that. Just one thing – shouldn’t this thread be in Software? Otherwise you words of wisdom will be lost!

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I probably used up all my wise words in post 11,370 and replies…..

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time?

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21:22 at the moment.

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Thanks…having problems with the sundial at the moment

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Did you remember to put your sundial one hour back?

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That’s my problem

I put the Gnome on as per instructions, but he kept running away!!!!

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That was probably the summer gnome. You must now put the winter gnome on!

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Yes, that will be it he was rather obnoxus…thanks

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You can configure each function to print, open the program, save the picture, …. in the options.

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Thanks Dave and Francoisl for your replies.
I will keep trying to get something that can be used as an attachment. I got the Print Screen shot and copied it to Paint. From there I put it on the Desktop so it would be readily available. Next, I opened up Picasa2 as a photo editor. So far I have not been able to import the file from the desktop into Picasa2. Despite the fact that a .gif was appended to the file. Apparently Picasa2 does not recognize it as a photo — or a picture for editing and will not import it. Also tried but could not get the Print Screen shot to be imported into Picasa2 directly.
There must be one simple step that I am missing.
Regards,
Slim

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I use PrintKey 2000 and is

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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I don’t know anything about this Picasa (Google) product, but if you’re going to do very much with graphics and particularly photos, you should be thinking about getting a “good” photo editing product. It will pay dividends in the long run. I suspect what happened to you is that you grabbed your screenshot with Paint and saved it as a BMP file. BMPs are notoriously LARGE in size. It may be that Picasa doesn’t recognize BMPs, I don’t know. Anyhow, I personally think that Paint is the first leg of your problem. With most of the available graphic products, some of which have been suggested here, not only can you “avoid” BMPs but you can customize your saving of files in areas like compression, quality and so on. Some examples of top products are Paint Shop Pro, Photoshop Elements and there are several others.

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Thanks Al for your help. It will take a while for me to work through all of this and get things working smoothly. I wish I had a magic wand that could be waved to dispel all the stumbling blocks. Your assistance is truly appreciated.
Will let you know of progress as it occurs.
With best regards,
Slim

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There is also post 270,762 to give you some ideas.

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Another program you might check out is IrfanView. It is a robust picture editing application and best of all it is . It is one of my favourites for sizing and working with “printscreen” captures as well as my digital photos!

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Thanks Skitterbug for your help. And thanks to you also Alan for confirming this approach.
With best regards,
Slim

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I second Skitterbug’s recomendation on Irfanview for this situation. You can use it to do the capture – Whole screen, a Foreground window, or a Foreground window client area (window without caption, menu and status bar), as well as resize/ rescale/ crop as required and save in a myriad of file formats. It also offers options to save to predetermined image sizes. Haven’t found anything that can beat it, once you’re familiar with its options.

Alan

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i guess i’ve been doing things the hard way! i print screen or alt + print screen, paste into MS Paint, crop it & save it as a *.jpg file. then i go into windows imaging tool, open it & save it again to actually convert it as a *.jpg file. are the tools you recommend faster?

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Screen capture utilities usually have options for capturing
– The active window.
– The first object you click on.
– A rectangle drawn with the mouse
and also various options to edit the screen capture and to save it.

Note 1: why do you need the Windows Imaging tool? Paint is perfectly able to create various file types.
Note 2: I usually find .png or .gif most suitable for screen shots, while .jpg is better for photographs.

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at home paint saves as .jpg fine (win XP), but for some reason at work on this win2k box, it doesn’t compress the .jpg files, they stay the same size as a .bmp files.

i’ve never tried .png or .gif, primarily out of habit. a while back i had never even heard of .png files and i thought of .gif’s as animated pics only for some reason.

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Depends on how fast you do your cropping and saving!

For me, Hardcopy is in my QuickLaunch and loads in about 1 second. I have it set up so that hitting PrntScreen gives me a set of cross-hairs to allow me to draw a rectangle of what I want to grab. So, Hit PrntScrn, click, click, click on the Save As button, type in a name… 6 – 7 seconds?

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just timed myself and it takes me 15-30 seconds (depending on how long it takes me to find the file to open). i’ve used ms OneNote once or twice for cropping straight from the desktop before, but that’s not really OneNote’s purpose so i usually just crop in paint. i’ll try out hardcopy and see how it is…

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John

A top tip I gave my old man , who wanted to do some quick changes to a photo he had taken was:

1) Insert it into a Word document.
2) Highlight the picture
3) Make the Picture toolbar visible
4) Use the crop tool to change the image to the bit he wanted to show me.
5) Save the word document with image
6) Email it

The picture toolbar has really simple manipulators but they can do a great job very efficiently…..

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i’m suprisingly more comfortable with MS paint, i’ve learned the ins & outs of it to a degree that it probably wasn’t intended for

i’ve used word before and i’d rather use MS paint…

thanks for the Words of wisdom though…

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