Saturday, September 02, 2006

Print Screen and resize the right way!

Ever tried to output a screenshot at 300dpi? It can sure be a challenge to make a software product look appealing when the screenshot looks so fuzzy. With the following technique, you can maintain the integrity of your screenshot- enough for 300dpi brochures or even billboard displays. Here's how...

Step 1. Capture it!

To make a screenshot or print screen, hold CTRL and press the 'print screen' button on your keyboard. To only capture the size of the active window just press CTRL, ALT, and the 'print screen' button. Or you can use any screen
capture software at this point if you need mouse arrow as well.

Step 2. Photoshop

In Photoshop, go to File menu or press CTRL-N to make a new document, then click OK. Photoshop will automatically size the document to the screen capture. (don't resize or do anything yet)

Now Press CTRL-V to paste your screen capture.

Step 3. Chane color mode
From the menu, choose Image > Mode > Indexed Color...
If it asks to flatten layers, choose YES. Choose the default settings by clicking OK on the dialog box. 256 colors OK!

Step 4. Resize to get ready for print in high quality 244 or 288 DPI
With an index color mode you may scale in multiples without altering the integrity of the screen capture.
Choose Image > Image Size...
Have Constrain Proportions checked, and Resample Image: Bicubic checked.

Change the resolution from 72 to 144, 216, 288, or any multiple of 72. If you choose 300dpi, for instance, it may skew the type. Now reenter the Image Size dialog box and uncheck the Resample Image box. You may now choose your output resolution, for example, 300dpi, or 600dpi, while maintaining the integrity of the image.

Step 5. DONE!
Now change the color mode back to RGB (or CMYK if printing), by choosing Image > Mode > RGB Color. You may now merge your higher resolution screenshot with a boxshot, or keep it as an independent higher resolution file.
and i recommend saving file to TIFF format for best quality.

That's it. thanks to http://www.turbophoto.com/Photoshop-Tricks


0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home