Stamps dialog

This dialog and the other tools within it allow you to create stamps that you can apply to your images. Once applied, from within the HyperSnap-DX window, you can "grab" a stamp with the mouse by left-click-drag to place it in whatever location you prefer. (You can even drag it part of the way off of the image if you wish to clip off some of the stamp's contents.) Empty background area that appears under the stamp when you relocate it will be filled with the default background color.

Stamps Folder: - this shows you the current "in-use" stamps folder HyperSnap-DX is pointed to. You can change this using the Browse button. Navigate through your system to locate the folder you would like to use to store stamps.

You can have up to 40 stamps in a folder. If you have more than that, they won't display properly. If you need to have more than 40 stamps total, make folders that allow you to categorize them. Then change the stamps folder the program uses to one of the other folders you've created to load the various stamps you need as you work.

New Stamp - click this to begin the process of creating a new stamp. This loads the Edit stamp dialog, a subset of the Stamps tool.

Stamp Name - this appears on the entire set of tabs. You define the name here by typing whatever you like. The program will automatically increment the name(s) for you if you want, with Stamp 2, Stamp 3, and so forth. If you do not want this to happen, enter your own name.

Check the box to the left of the stamp's name to have that stamp be applied automatically to your captured images. You can have any number of stamps auto-inserted on images.

Edit - Click this to enter the Edit or New Stamp (both called Edit Stamp) tabs. Once there you'll see several other buttons and controls as part of the Edit stamp tabs grouping, covered below.

One important tip is that you can change an "applied" stamp (for example its text font or color) so long as you don't change the underlying bitmap in any way (such as creating a new selection, drawing anything else on the image). The stamp is editable (by double-clicking it) until you alter the base bitmap. At that time the stamp is now "fixed" as part of the bitmap itself, and will not be editable except in the case where you want to crop it off where it was applied "outside" of the boundaries of a bitmap. So don't make any other changes to the base image until you're sure the stamp looks the way you want it to look.

Preview - gives you a quick look at how your sample will look in action, leaving out the image to which the stamp will be applied. You can also edit the stamp's size and proportions within the preview window, too. You do this by dragging or sizing the stamp's

Delete - deletes the selected stamp from your collection. This is not reversible, so be careful, and make sure you've marked the one you really want to delete.

Insert - applies the selected stamp to the current image in HyperSnap-DX's workspace.

The features of New Stamp and Edit Stamp are essentially the same, and are broken out into multiple tabs, all of which are explained below. The only difference between New and Edit is that the New Stamp dialog asks you for a name on the bottom. Edit stamp uses the pre-existing name, and of course you should have selected a stamp within the stamp list prior to clicking Edit Stamp.

On the bottom of the tab sets are several other functions that are important to explain, too.

Save stamp - when this is checked, you're creating or saving a stamp which will then go into your database of available stamp tools. You can then use it later in another project, on another image, as you desire. Note that if this is checked, you must apply the stamp manually to the current picture by choosing the stamp tool from the painting tools palette and then apply it to the image. If you check Insert and save, below, the stamp is both saved and applied to your image in one swoop, when you click OK to close out the stamp edit/create tabs.

Insert on picture - when this is checked, you're creating a "one time use only" stamp to be applied only to the current picture in HyperSnap-DX's current window. The stamp is not saved for future use on other images.

Insert and save - one-stop-shopping is the bargain with this check box. Checking this and you are both creating a stamp, and then without adding further steps to the process, HyperSnap-DX applies the stamp to the current image.

At any time during stamp editing or creation, you can click the Preview button to get a look as to how the section you are working on will look when applied. (It won't show the image "under or above" the stamp, which it may have no way of knowing about, it will just show a representation of the current stamp tab's image, text, frame, and so forth.

Click each tab's name to open up help for that New Stamp or Edit Stamp configuration tab. Click the tab name again to close it to conserve screen real estate or when you're done with that topic.

Deep bits.

The bit depth of this image should be equal to, or less than, the image to which your stamp is applied. If you are applying a stamp with a truecolor background image to a 16 color original, the stamp background (and perhaps font colors) will be altered to match the destination file's format. If you apply a color stamp with color fonts to a grayscale image, then the stamp will be converted to grayscale at the time of application.

From Selection - click this to load a picture fragment currently selected in HyperSnap-DX document window. If there is no visible selction, the stamp will use the entire image from HyperSnap-DX document window.

From File - click this to load an Open Picture dialog, which will allow you to select any supported image file format to use as the source of your stamp.

When this dialog appears, it has several important options. These include, of course, the file name, a file filter drop-down, which allows you to choose which types of file(s) to preview in the Open Picture, and Page number to open. The latter is a value, which defaults to 1, allows you to choose from available pages in multi-page images formats (such as animated GIF files).

Finally, the Open picture dialog has a check box Enable Preview, which allows you to see what the content is of the file, or subsequent pages of multi-image files you may elect to preview, by changing the number in Page number to Open. If you un-checked Enable Preview, the the dialog will operate a bit more quickly on larger files, but you will lose the ability to see your chosen frame of multi-page formats beyond page one. Click OK to open that file as your stamp source, or Cancel to abort.

Edit Image - drops you back into HyperSnap-DX so you can alter the chosen file. When you're done, save it and re-enter the Stamps dialog to continue with your changes. (The first time you do this, it may be a little disconcerting to see your stamp project "go away", but you can come back to it.)

Use this image on the stamp - check this to use the selected image on your stamp as a background. The source of this can be either a selection, which you can make within this tab which previews your active image upon checking From Selection, or From File, which loads a file browsing dialog.

Font formatting tool buttons - use the buttons to format the text or fields you apply to your stamps and images. The font selector button lets you choose a font, including in those choices all of the typical options in the Windows common font selection dialog. The paragraph buttons and B I U buttons allow you to apply paragraph formatting to the text you've typed (or wish to have the fields place into your image).

Eyedropper tool - this tool lets you pick a color directly off of any location of your Windows screen. It will enable a set of screen-width crosshairs, with a dropper at the center. Locate the dropper over something that's the color you wish to use and then click your left mouse button. The color under the eyedropper will appear on the eyedropper button. Alternately you can click the downward-facing arrow on the eyedropper to choose a color from the standard Windows color selector panel.

Date button - check this to insert a programmatic date field into your text block. This is dynamic and will be applied to the image at the time the stamp is put onto the image. The format used is the current standard Windows date format (which may vary from one country to another). You can also directly type this in by entering %date% in any text string you desire. For example you could have a stamp that has the following text:

Copyright by Hyperionics %date% All Rights Reserved

Time button - like the Date button, used to insert a date field, %date%, into your stamp. It works just like the Date button in that the actual text applied to the message is dynamic, and also uses the time format set by the current system properties in Control panel, International settings, date and time.

File button - applies to the stamp the current filename of the image. Important note: if your filename is very long, and the image is very small, your stamp will cause HyperSnap-DX to add so much material at the top or bottom as to degrade the aesthetics of the image. Experiment a bit to see what font size and other formatting issues work best with various image sizes. Play with a test image and various font sizes in order to get to a good solution prior to using this tool with very long filenames.

Path - Like the file button, will insert the current image's path name. You can also put the File and Path fields together as, %path%%file% in order to get a long representation of the file's operating system properties, such as C:\Program Files\HyperSnap5\image.jpg.

User - applies the user name of the currently-logged-on user. So for example if the Administrator is logged on, it would add "Administrator" to the new area of the image the stamp creates. This function operates like the File, Path, and Time buttons, essentially.

Use this text on the stamp - check this to apply the text or special "fields" accessible from the buttons to the right to your stamp (and thus to your image). When unchecked, no matter what text is on the tab, it will not be applied to the stamp or image. The text can be formatted very much like that in a word processor, with multiple alignments, fonts, and colors being supported, in addition to powerful field functions such as date, time, and so on.

Frames are 3D rectilinear objects that HyperSnap-DX can apply around an image applied as a stamp, or you can manually drag the frame to fit within whatever square or rectangular shape you want on top of an image. (Handy for framing an image "within" another, such as a picture of a picture.)

Frame color picker - this loads the eyedropper tool to pick the frame color from any visible object on your desktop. You can also choose a color from the standard color picker drop-down that appears when you click the downward-facing arrow to the right of the eyedropper graphic.

Background color - working as does the Frame color picker tool, you can choose a background color from either anything visible on your desktop or from the standard color drop-down.

Make it transparent - when checked, makes the background of your frame transparent so the image below will show through.

Frame width (in pixels) - setting this to zero disables the frame portion of the stamps dialog. This is the same as un-checking the "use this..." box on the other tabs within the Stamp create/edit tabs.

Image position (pixels) boxes (Left and Top) - establish the left and top coordinates in pixels of the picture selected on Image tab relative to the upper left and top edges of your stamp. You can adjust these two values to make the picture appear where you'd like within the stamp.

Text margins (pixels) boxes (Left, Top, Right, Bottom) - adjust the margins around the perimeter of your stamp's frame so that text doesn't "bang into" the frame. Provides breathing room for the text contents of the frame.

Stamp size (pixels) boxes (Width, Height) - set the size of the finished stamp here by entering pixel values for its width and height. You can do this also graphically by clicking the Preview button and then resizing the stamp window that's displayed there.

Set to image size - click this button to make the stamp size to match exactly the size of the picture selected on Image tab.

Place at current selection - checking this HyperSnap-DX will insert the new or editing stamp at the location of the current selection on the current document in HyperSnap-DX's window.

Extend picture at top (add as a header) - the stamp gets "glued" onto the top of the current image as a header, as if you'd extended the image's background at its top edge and then applied the stamp there.

Extend picture at bottom (add as footer) - the stamp gets "glued" onto the bottom of the current image as a footer, as if you'd extended the image's background at its bottom edge, and then applied the stamp there.

Place on the picture - inserts the stamp directly on the image, overwriting the image's contents with the stamp's contents. When you check this, some other functions relating to the Offset of the image, are enabled.

Offset (Horizontal and Vertical) - specify here the offset you'd like to use when applying this stamp when you are placing the stamp on the picture directly. If you don't specify offset, the stamp is applied to the upper left hand corner of the image. If you apply values here, the stamp is "shifted" by the values you specify here. These two values are modified by the selectors below the Offset boxes, which allow you to choose from which locus of the image you wish the offset to be applied.

From picture (offset application starting point) - these allow you to specify the "starting point" of the offset you wish to have applied. You can have the stamp shifted from the locations listed here (Top-left, Top Center, and so forth) by the values listed in the Offset entry boxes, above. The combination of these "points of origin" boxes and the offset values allow powerful control over placement of your stamps.

Blend (Transparent to Opaque) - use this slider to control how much your stamp (both image and text) blends in with the base image. It can be set to be Opaque, or have no blending, to Transparent, which is 100% blending with the base image.

Auto-add this stamp to all captured images - tells the program to use this stamp when you save any images using HyperSnap-DX. Great for the application of copyright text to game screen captures, or for other "production" uses where you'd like text or other data to be applied without any other action by you. This can save a lot of work when you've got to create a bundle of captures for public release or other purposes, and you want to declare ownership, authorship, and so forth. This is the same as "Auto Insert" tick box on the main "Edit Stamps" dialog box.

Click OK to either save your edited stamp, or create your new stamp, and close the Edit stamp dialog. Remember that you must apply a name to the stamp if it's a new one, prior to saving.