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Subject:Re: Word & Paintbrush From:"Cepek, Marta" <marta -at- M3ISYSTEMS -dot- QC -dot- CA> Date:Tue, 23 May 1995 22:03:13 -0400
Hi W.!
>shareware product called SCap to actually capture the images.) I print in B&W
>so I replace all the colored areas with black & white in Paintbrush.
...
>Try saving it in monochrome if you print in B&W. That cuts the .bmp file to
>at least a third of its colored size.
Why replace them manually? Saving in monochrome will do it for you.
We also print in B&W, but saving a BMP as monochrome ends up giving too much
contrast and misrepresenting the dialog box. You're right, it does reduce
the .BMP file size, but 95% of dialog boxes I've had to capture needed the
grey tones for differenciation of items such as the title bar, scroll bars,
even the shading of a [gray] box itself. For the visual/aesthetic quality I
like to see in my documents, I find the monochrome B/W (i.e., no gray tones)
unattractive.
>Another thing that reduces the size of a Paintbrush bitmap, if your bitmap
>is smaller than 8.5 x 11, change the size of the image: from Options/ Image
>Attributes... paste your image on the smaller "board."
I'd never tried that before, so on reading your message, I did. I had a
problem estimating the final size of the workspace to paste to (as well, you
didn't mention I had to copy first, so I lost my trial image before I had a
chance to paste it). A much easier (and more accurate) method of cropping
an image in Paintbrush is to first select the portion of the image you want
to paste into this new workspace size, and instead of "Copy" (you probably
hit ^C by habit), instead, go in the <Edit> menu and select <Copy to>. This
will not only prompt you to enter a file name, but also give you the
opportunity to "save as file type" (i.e., PCX, monochrome BMP, 16 col. BMP,
or 256 col. BMP). (I normally just overwrite the original captured screen
with the same filename. This prevents HD clutter. **Important** when
closing the image do *not* save changes if you've over-written the same file
name). If you then open the file again, you will see the workspace is
already cropped to the size of the image.
>In Word, Insert the .bmp file. You can scale the .bmp, and crop it further
>in Word.
However, this will not reduce the .DOC file size, the .BMP file size, nor
will it increase display memory or speed up Word any.
Anyways, I didn't mean to be argumentative or defensive. I guess I just
didn't explain myself clearly enough <sigh>.
