How to work with a Chapter

[SaranacLake]

6 hours ago, gizmola said:

Yes, make your screen shots however you want them at highest quality.  With most quality mobile phones these days, as well as computers with high density displays like the macbook retina displays, you want your images to be 2x the desired size.  So if you are going to display an image at 300px wide, then you want the image to be 600px.  

How good is the quality of a screenshot taken with Snagit?

Is there a way to take better quality screenshots?

Isn't the quality of the screenshot purely a function of your monitors resolution?  After all, if you are capturing your screen, then the resolution of the screen should impact the quality of the screenshot, right?

All of my screenshots are taken on my Retina MBP, although I'm not sure how good Snagit it as far as high-resolution goes.  (I do know it is superior when it comes to editing and marking up screenshots for business presentations and books like I am doing.)

 

 

6 hours ago, gizmola said:

Here is an article that provides a visual demonstration of the noticeable difference in quality.  On an Iphone or Samsung Galaxy, this could make the difference between a screenshot that is blurry and illegible and one that is clear.

Thanks for the link!

 

6 hours ago, gizmola said:

Having done some mass conversions in the past, Photoshop has tools for automating conversions, using Automate|Batch

Okay.

 

[gizmola]

3 hours ago, SaranacLake said:

All of my screenshots are taken on my Retina MBP, although I'm not sure how good Snagit it as far as high-resolution goes.  (I do know it is superior when it comes to editing and marking up screenshots for business presentations and books like I am doing.)

I don't use snagit but I do use a similar tool which has preferences you can set for the raster image format and quality.  I'm going to assume that snagit has similar settings.  I set mine to create a jpg with 100% quality, so that no compression is utilized.  The resolution of the image in pixels will be whatever your screen resolution is although snaggit might have a retina specific option, as my tool does.   In the case of the tool I use (monosnap) that option is "shrink retina snaps."  More about this in a minute...

A full screen snapshot on my 15" macbook is 2880 × 1800. 

But what does the browser actually believe the resolution to be?  It actually thinks that the resolution width at full screen is 1440.  This is the trickery that Retina plays.  You can google more about it if you want the details.  

So if I choose the "shrink retina snaps" monosnap reduces the screen shot to 1440 pixels wide.  At this point, assuming you don't plan to remake all your screenshots, you have whatever you have.  Hopefully your original images are high quality, and you retained those. 

[SaranacLake]

19 hours ago, gizmola said:

I don't use snagit but I do use a similar tool which has preferences you can set for the raster image format and quality.  I'm going to assume that snagit has similar settings.  I set mine to create a jpg with 100% quality, so that no compression is utilized.

Yes, Snagit has a "100% quality" option.

 

19 hours ago, gizmola said:

The resolution of the image in pixels will be whatever your screen resolution is although snaggit might have a retina specific option, as my tool does.

I am using an older version of Snagit because I don't like how capture works in the newest version, but I will have to be sure whichever VERSION - there is that word again! - I am using takes advantage of my Retina's resolution.  (Might have to upgrade.)

 

19 hours ago, gizmola said:

In the case of the tool I use (monosnap) that option is "shrink retina snaps."  More about this in a minute...

A full screen snapshot on my 15" macbook is 2880 × 1800. 

But what does the browser actually believe the resolution to be?  It actually thinks that the resolution width at full screen is 1440.  This is the trickery that Retina plays.  You can google more about it if you want the details.  

I am guessing that it tricks the browser to think the image/capture is 1440 wide, so that on a regular screen, things look okay, and on a Retina screen, things will be 1440 wide but look acceptable since there is really 2880 pixels in the same space as a 1440.  Something like that?

 

19 hours ago, gizmola said:

So if I choose the "shrink retina snaps" monosnap reduces the screen shot to 1440 pixels wide.  At this point, assuming you don't plan to remake all your screenshots, you have whatever you have.  Hopefully your original images are high quality, and you retained those. 

On my Retina, Snagit has an option Advanced > Scale down retina imaging when sharing.

I guess I would want to have that CHECKED so that things are 1440 wide for normal screens, but the 2880 kicks in on Retina screens?

If so, I guess I screwed up, because that box is currently Unchecked, and all of my screenshots were taken as such.

Of course, either way, I think I have to rethink how an online book might look and work on mobile which is something I never even considered when i wrote the book?!  (Live and learn!!)

 

[gizmola]

1 hour ago, SaranacLake said:

I am guessing that it tricks the browser to think the image/capture is 1440 wide, so that on a regular screen, things look okay, and on a Retina screen, things will be 1440 wide but look acceptable since there is really 2880 pixels in the same space as a 1440.  Something like that?

Yeah the OS believes that the desktop is 1440 wide, but there's actually 4x the pixels.  There are some good blog posts that explain how this stuff works if you are curious.

1 hour ago, SaranacLake said:

I guess I would want to have that CHECKED so that things are 1440 wide for normal screens, but the 2880 kicks in on Retina screens?

If so, I guess I screwed up, because that box is currently Unchecked, and all of my screenshots were taken as such.

Right, well, it's still going to be 1440, so depending on the size of the screenshot when embedded in the document, that might be ok.  Ideally you would have the be 720w or less, or whatever relative size you have.  If it's too late for that at this point, then it's a point of reference for your process the next time around, or if you do a revision.

[SaranacLake]

20 hours ago, gizmola said:

Yeah the OS believes that the desktop is 1440 wide, but there's actually 4x the pixels.  There are some good blog posts that explain how this stuff works if you are curious.

Right, well, it's still going to be 1440, so depending on the size of the screenshot when embedded in the document, that might be ok.  Ideally you would have the be 720w or less, or whatever relative size you have.  If it's too late for that at this point, then it's a point of reference for your process the next time around, or if you do a revision.

I'll read up on this, and likely have a lot to learn and do over.

Not sure when I'll get to this, though, I have this super-demanding shareholder over in the database design area that won't cut me any slack, so this mobile photo thing will have to take a back seat until I appease this other guy?!  😁

[gizmola]

Haha,

Well nobody said modern system development was easy.

[SaranacLake]

On 5/20/2020 at 3:18 AM, gizmola said:

Haha,

Well nobody said modern system development was easy.

So true!

But if/when you finally ship a working system that actually solves the problems that it is supposed to solve, it is one of the coolest feelings there is!!

 Hopefully I live long enough to see that happen with this project of mine?!