İAndrew M. Rudd, Soundhouses
http://business.virgin.net/sound.houses
Capturing
pictures
Capturing
a picture from the computer screen (PC, Windows 3)
Capturing
a picture from the computer screen (PC, Windows 95)
Picture
Files
Pixel
pictures
Vector
pictures
Compressed
pictures
Further
Information on particular File Types
1. JPEG
files
2. TIFF
Files and GIF files
3. EPS
Files
Capturing a picture from the computer screen (PC, Windows)
1 Make sure your picture is on the screen
2 Press the key marked ‘Print Screen’ or PrntScrn (near the top right of the keyboard). This will copy the whole screen to the clip-board, storing it temporarily in the computer’s memory.
3 Quit the program you are using
4 Open a program to look at the picture. I suggest Paint, but you could paste it directly into Word if you prefer.
(To find Windows Paint.
Go to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Paint.)
5 In Paint, pull down the Edit menu.
Select Paste.
The picture should appear. If you wish you can change colours, rub bits out and so on.
6 Print the picture as normal or save it for future use.
Picture files come in about three main types.
Pictures made up of dots (pixels) are very common. These are often called Bitmaps (because each ‘bit’ of the picture is ‘mapped’ to a different colour.) When you enlarge one of these pictures it breaks down into a pattern of dots, or pixels.
On PCs, each file has a suffix, a group of letters after the name which tells the computer what sort of file it is. A file called PICTURE.BMP would be a pixel picture of this type.
Double-clicking a picture of this type will cause the computer to load a program to look at the file.
These pictures are made of lines which the computer ‘colours in’ each time they are drawn. When you enlarge these pictures they retain their integrity. e.g. Windows Metafiles (.WMF)
Pictures of both the previous types can be compressed to a very much smaller size. Compressed files are very useful to move from one machine to another, or over the Internet.
Further Information on particular File Types
These are highly compressed pictures and have become the most common format on the Internet.
They can be opened using Internet Explorer or Firefox, and will be accepted by all recent word-processors and DTP programs.
‘Tagged Image Format’ files are also common on the Internet. They are not compressed like JPEG files.
Encapsulated Postscript files are used to transfer accurate font information within a graphic, and are handled by programs such as Pagemaker.
İAndrew M. Rudd, Soundhouses