Hello Oldman,
The first thing I would do, would be to set your screen
resolution to the highest possible (1280 x 800 for my screen.
This site gives a good step by step set of directions for using
PhotoShop. However, I feel certain you can do this in Paint Shop Pro.
I have been printing clear screenshots for a long time by selecting
the very highest resolution setting on my printer,
http://www.turbophoto.com/Photoshop-Tricks/screenshot-photoshop-trick/index.htm
GraphicPush has a little different solution:
http://www.graphicpush.com/index.php?id=58
Readers of the above procedure had some additional comments and
methods of their own:
?Here?s another alternative that offers nearly identical results
without as much hassle? (I worked for seven years in print before my
last five were spent primarily on screen).
So here goes? We all know simply resizing a 72dpi image to 300 is
gonna result in some ugly blurry, fuzziness, etc. We can avoid this by
disabling Photoshop?s bicubing resampling (the process that PS uses to
resize images).
Disabling bicubing resampling (in simple terms) forces Photoshop to
simply multiply pixels as they are, instead of adding new pixels
consisting of blended colors to ?soften? a resized picture.
While you typically don?t want to turn this off, cause it?ll really
screw up photos if you resize this way, it works perfectly for sizing
up screen shots. And its this easy:
> Open your General Photoshop Preferences Dialog.
> Switch Interpolation from ?Bicubic? to ?Nearest Neighbor?
> Resize your image to the needed size at 300dpi
And you?re done. Perfect. Same end results as the aforementioned
vector trick, in a lot less time. Yes, you still have a large
print-worthy bitmap file to deal with, but that?s why we have 80gig
hard drives.
PS. Be sure to switch your interpolation settings back when you?re done.?
Another:
??m an interactive designer, but I think the following will be useful.
When using nearest neighbor with screenshots, also use 100% increments
to avoid creating ugly jaggies in the interpolation. Example: if you
have a perfectly sharp 2x2 pixel image and want it bigger without any
funny business, you?d want a 4x4 pixel image.
So technically, you should not interpolate 72DPI to 300DPI as the
linked article suggests, do 288DPI or 360DPI instead. Otherwise, you
will end up with crap pixels here and there?formally pristine lines
suddenly crooked, odd bulges in text output, etc. Ugh.
On a side note, you may not need to upsample the screenshot to high
DPI?just scale it in your layout program, not in Photoshop. The
imagesetter/postscript will do the scaling for you. The ?300DPI rule?
is to prevent blocky-looking PHOTOS at typical LPI settings; when you
use a low-res photo by accident in print, and it comes out blocky,
that is actually what you want in the screenshot. It probably depends
on the imagesetter you?re outputting to.
This is probably the same thing that Jim is saying with ?just save as
EPS from Photoshop?. In this case, you?re saving a bitmap EPS from
photoshop (not vector), and the layout program just interpolates the
data the way it will.?
http://www.cameronmoll.com/archives/000018.html
ScreenPrinter will allow you to try out their software for free:
http://www.etrusoft.com/screen-capture-software-reviews/Screen_Printer.htm
Snagit is another program that may interest you, but it does not seem
to sharpen images, although they advertise clearer prints. You can try
it for free.
http://www.techsmith.com/snagit/snagvsprintscreen.asp
http://www.techsmith.com/
Download a fully functioning free trial:
http://www.techsmith.com/download/trials.asp
Ashampoo is recommended by About, and it has a free trial:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=graphicssoft&zu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ashampoo.com%2Ffrontend%2Fproducts%2Fphp%2Fproduct.php%3Fsession_langid%3D2%26idstring%3D0024%26quickmenu%3D0
Other options, none of which I am familiar with (Not to say they are
not a solution for you)
http://www.stratopoint.com/czoomer_screenshots.htm
These and more tips can be found at the following About site:
?? Set up your screen with the final destination of your screen
capture in mind. Good color schemes and fonts for on-screen display do
not necessarily translate well to color or grayscale printing.
? Be consistent in the screen resolution settings of your monitor and
the size of the application windows.
? Unless your object is to show off wallpaper and wild color schemes,
stick with non-exotic colors such as the standard Windows desktop
scheme. You can create a color scheme specifically for doing screen
captures.
? Avoid desktop color schemes that include gradient colors. Switch to
solid colors.
? Consider converting color screen captures to grayscale. Experiment
? some color combinations work better in grayscale than others.?
http://desktoppub.about.com/od/screencaptures/l/aa_screensetup.htm
Don?t forget about the lossy characteristics of jpg (aka jpeg) format:
http://www.computerbuddies.us/myths_and_facts_about_jpg.htm
?Hello Hanford, After reading your comment on my blog I decided to
stop by your blog and really enjoyed reading this article. It is
pretty amazing that even companies like Google can fail to take clean
and crisp screenshots.
Recently, the print screen button on my Win XP wasn't working so I
downloaded a screen shot utility which optimizes the screen shots
before saving them. I noticed the same problem with the screen shots,
i.e. they weren't crisp (even on my monitor). Upon a little
investigation I found that the screen shot utility was saving the
screen shots in an optimized format (JPG 70%). Since I needed to edit
the shots in photoshop, I raised the quality of JPG and voila! all my
screen shots were crisp from that point on.
I have been working on a project called OpenEncyclopaedia.com (OE) and
after making this comment I am going to contribute a link to this post
to OE (hope that's OK with you). Frank Mash?
?After reading your comment on my blog I decided to stop by your blog
and really enjoyed reading this article. It is pretty amazing that
even companies like Google can fail to take clean and crisp
screenshots.
Recently, the print screen button on my Win XP wasn;t working so I
downloaded a screen shot utility which optimizes the screen shots
before saving them. I noticed the same problem with the screen shots,
i.e. they weren;t crisp (even on my monitor). Upon a little
investigation I found that the screen shot utility was saving the
screen shots in an optimized format (JPG 70%). Since I needed to edit
the shots in photoshop, I raised the quality of JPG and voila! all my
screen shots were crisp from that point on.
I have been working on a project called OpenEncyclopaedia.com (OE)
and after making this comment I am going to contribute a link to this
post to OE (hope that;s OK with you)? Frank Mash
http://blog.hanfordlemoore.com/2006/01/09/taking-screenshots-for-your-blog/feed/
?I've found the same problem. In my case I found that printing
screenshots at 600dpi on an HP4 and then reproducing them on a Xerox
5090 gave horrible results. To get around this I printed my screens at
300dpi on the HP -- when these shots went through the photocopier they
produced better results than the 600dpi versions.?
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/archives/9703/techwhirl-9703-00459.html
This article helps explain printing at 300DPI vs 600DPI
http://www.blaha.net/Main%20Picture%20Resolution.htm
One more tip, if you use PhotoShop or PaintShop Pro, consider using a
macro/script to batch sharpen many images easily.
I trust one or more of these solutions will do the trick for you!
If not, please request an Answer Clarification, before you rate, and I
will assist you further on this question.
Sincerely, Crabcakes
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