screenshots

[Clovis]

Thanks,

Another problem I have is that when I take screenshots, they end up at about 10 MB. This is rather inconvenient for posting on forums. Even when I resize them, they are still about the same size in MB. Any ideas on how to reduce the overall quality to make them easier to upload and download?

[T-hawk]

Another problem I have is that when I take screenshots, they end up at about 10 MB.

That sounds like .BMP file format which is tremendously inefficient and huge. Make sure you're saving in .JPG format which should come out about 500 KB at most and probably more like 150KB. Paint and Irfanview both can. Irfanview should have a quality slider for JPEG where you can dial between file size and image clarity. (My Paint Shop Pro does.)

[sooooo]

10MB! What file format are they saving in? A bitmap? They need to be JPGs to upload to the internetweb.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Another problem I have is that when I take screenshots, they end up at about 10 MB. This is rather inconvenient for posting on forums. Even when I resize them, they are still about the same size in MB. Any ideas on how to reduce the overall quality to make them easier to upload and download?

Sure, use the .jpg format. With .jpg, you can compress the screenshot, which loses some quality depending on the level of compression you chose. Using Irfanview for example, if you save the image as a .jpg file, you can use a slider to select the amount of compression to apply; I use between 60-75 depending on how many details the screenshot has (the lower the number, the fuzzier the final image gets). You have to experiment a bit to get a feeling for the right settings.

By using .jpg images, you can compress your images to about 100kb, depending on size of course, while still retaining a high quality.

-Kylearan

[scottin]

Another tidbit that may be helpful to know, if you are playing in windowed mode. If you use Alt-PrintScreen (instead of just PrintScreen), it will take a snapshot of JUST the active window, instead of the whole screen.


sgc

EDIT: fix a typo

[Clovis]

I think I've just been hitting "Save" in the Paint menu, which probably automatically saves it as a BMP image. I didn't realize there was that much difference between bitmap and jpeg.