Korg Forums

Assyrianpianist

Hello Everybody,

OK, I know so little about digital photography and Pic editing in general. I'm trying to make some quality screenshots for my website. I'm using the latest version of "Snag It" to capture the screen. My question is, what settings contribute to getting a High resolution screen shot?

Here's an example of a pro tools session:

I'm not happy with the quality. I'm sure there's a way to do a better job.
_________________
----------
sam

www.facebook.com/TutorialsForKorgArrangerKeyboards

www.facebook.com/IranianChordCharts
www.facebook.com/ArabicMusicChordCharts
www.facebook.com/AfghanMusicChordCharts

X-Trade · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 5:42 pm Post subject:

A true full-screen screenshot should be at exactly the same resolution & quality of your screen because it should take the image straight from the screen buffer.

From there:
-don't reduce the resolution unless you need to (i.e. 'scale' the image), only crop
-If your image doesn't include any detailed photography or other elements with many colours, use a PNG file format.

JPEG works by tessellating shapes, which works okay for busy photographs but you loose edge-definition. PNG is more like a bitmap (and I like it for other reasons like supporting alpha channel) but most importantly it uses a colour table, so the less colours used in your image the smaller the file size! most GUI graphics consist of a limited number of colours so this generally works okay for screenshots of program windows, etc.
_________________
Current Gear: Kronos 61, Karma, RADIAS-R, ESX-1, microKorg, MS2000B, MiniKP, AX3000B, nanoKontrol, nanoPad MK II, Novation ReMote37SL, Akai APC20, MOTU MIDI TimePiece 2.
Past Gear: Korg TR61, Poly800, EA-1, Kawai K1
Software: Cubase Studio 4, NI Reaktor 5, FM8, Ableton Live 9. Apple OSX(10.8.3 Mountain Lion) on 15" MacBook Pro

cello · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 6:10 pm Post subject:

All sreen caps are at (roughly) 72dpi. You can increase the dpi in photoshop to say 150. But on a website (which is on screen so it's 72dpi) will not be able to display 150 dpi in better quality - it will just want to display at double the size...

PNG advice is good from X-Trade.
_________________
Plugged in: Jupiter-80, V-Synth GTv2, XV5050, SRV330, Symphony Module, ER mk2, D3200, iMS20, iPolysix, Alesis M1 Active Mk2
www.soundcloud.com/ngowans
Repository of Sound

Assyrianpianist · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 9:41 pm Post subject:

Thanks guys for the response,
I gotta think about what you said first, before i ask another question.

What do you think about the screenshot I made? What would you call the quality of the pic? A low res? Average?
_________________
----------
sam

www.facebook.com/TutorialsForKorgArrangerKeyboards

www.facebook.com/IranianChordCharts
www.facebook.com/ArabicMusicChordCharts
www.facebook.com/AfghanMusicChordCharts

Sharp · Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:08 pm Post subject:

My 2 cents, your using the wrong file format. JPG by design will try blend pixels together which in turn leaves you with an image that's not so sharp. Text can look very fuzzy.

Screen shots with text are normally best when saved as PNG files. This will produce razor sharp images, and there are still keep the files sizes down too by using pallet based options when saving the png.

Regards
Sharp.
_________________

Assyrianpianist · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:12 am Post subject:

Ok, Thanks a lot. I'm definitely going to save the pic with .PNG format. I just didn't know what the .PNG format was.
_________________
----------
sam

www.facebook.com/TutorialsForKorgArrangerKeyboards

www.facebook.com/IranianChordCharts
www.facebook.com/ArabicMusicChordCharts
www.facebook.com/AfghanMusicChordCharts