What software do you use to make screen caps?

Screen, screencaps, I have them! They're not the best, but at they're a little bit lighter than the originals. I was able to take fair screen caps of Obidala Sanctuary's v4.7 and 4.8 layouts.

I had to do some tweeking in photoshop, so you'll be able to see more detail but at least you can see what Obidala used to look like before I transform it to another layout.

I have learned that I need to experiment a lot when taking screen caps. These ones, I was pretty close to the monitor and maybe mess around with the light so there's no glare. But over all, they came out 'fair'. Next time, they will be 'good', then 'better', 'improving' and finally, 'excellent'.

My question: What's the trick to making really good screen caps of layouts? What can do I for next time to make them better?

~aeryn

 

From what I can understand, you're using a camera to take a picture of your screen? (Well, the part about tweaking the lighting suggested this) Is there something that's preventing you from using Print Screen and pasting it in Photoshop?

If you have to use a camera for whatever reason, I can only suggest turning off the flash and using a tripod. Don't shine any light on the screen, in fact, the screen is lit by itself so you need no extra light (you can even turn off all the lights in your room). Experiment with the aperture and exposure settings to get the exact brightness you need. If you use a tripod, you can have as long or short exposure times as you want.

 

thanks, Duel_of_the_Fetts

~~aeryn

 

I figured out an easy way to make screen caps without even picking up a camera!! I learned about this from my web design ii teacher.

There's this art program called Irfranview. It's a free download (I used it before but didn't find much use for it until now). On the menu, go to "Options" and click on "Screen Capture," Don't mess with any of the values and and click ok.

Then, open up your website and hit Ctrl + F11 and bam, automatic screen cap in irfranview. You can crop what you want, save it as a .jp and it's done. (God, I love my web design ii class

~aeryn

 

Cool

I am going to look for that

 

There's no need to download any programs to get screen captures of regular website windows. The "Print Screen" (or "PrtSc" or "Prnt Scr" or similar) key near the upper right your keyboard can put a copy of the screen on your clipboard, which you can then paste into Paint or any other image-editing programs or any program that'll let you paste images.

Any teacher who teaches "Web Design" (or any computer-related class, for that matter) should be fired if they don't know about the Print Screen key and how it works.

 

Yes...I'm pretty shocked, actually. But wasn't that suggested in the first reply?

 

The program works great. And it's good for resizing the image to make it a thumbnail image. I know about the print screen, but I like this way better.

~aeryn

 

I happen to use hypersnap DX, which uses scrolling to get a screenshot. So if the webpage is bigger than the screen (with scroll bars) it will auto scroll the website down and just take a snapshot of that entire page!

 

Sounds interesting, BobaFett-MP.

~aeryn

 

I know how to make screencaptures of windows.

But what I don't know is how to make screencaptures of DVD movies played on my computer. Off course the normal technique works, but if you want to edit the picture, the picture keeps "moving" any tips on that, or programs to recommend?

 

It's usually not possible to screen cap from a DVD, unless your DVD software has the feature. The DVD stream bypasses video memory and goes directly to your monitor, so programs can't access it. THe DVD player software allows you to do it because it is decoding the actual DVD data. I think both PowerDVD and WinDVD have the ability to screen cap.

 

I tried to take a screen cap of my Windows Media Player, playing a Clone Wars episode using irfranveiw, but after saving it and opening up the file again, all I got was the screen cap of the media player and no image inside it.

Is there a way to fix this?

~aeryn

 

Use a camera?

LOL

Hmm...in useing media players, is it you;re watching the DVD or are you watching a preview for it you downloaded, or what?

 

i thought what i'd do is download an episode somewhere, open it up in wmp, pause it so nothing was blurry and then take the screen cap. but once it's saved and i open up the file, there's nothing there. only the wmp window.

i thought maybe it had something to do with selecting either foreground or whole screen but i'm still not sure.

~aeryn

 

You won't be able to capture screenshots of the Media Player. The video that you see goes straight to your monitor.

Try this:

Take a screen shot of your Media Player playing something. Paste it into Photoshop or whatever, and you'll see the video, maybe with some black borders around it. Edit that whole video area. Try making a circle out of it. If you play the movie, you should see it playing in the circle. Back when I had a TV tuner, I used to paint my desktop using the color of the black box and I got a TV feed as my wallpaper.

 

thanks Defiance. I'll try that.

~aeryn

 

wait... what? how?! i wanna try...

tutorial please... unless i am missing something...

 

Well, it's just a demonstration of what happens when Media player plays a video: whatever color you get in the video area when you Print Screen, Media Player replaces it with the video. Once the video is no longer loaded, the picture will only have a black square.

 

Yay, I did it! I made a screen shot from a video. I downloaded Evanescence's "My Immortal Video" and then played it in Windows Media Player, opened up Ifranview and while it was playing, made a screen capture.

I don't know why but it never occured to me to use WMP, but it works.

~aeryn