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SnagIt User's Manual Version 2.0 for Microsoft Windows 3.0 TECHSMITH CORPORATION Copyright c Copyright 1990, 1991, TechSmith Corporation. All Rights Reserved. No part of this manual may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording for any purpose without the written consent of TechSmith Corporation. AcknowledgmentsSnagIt was created by Stewart Nutter and Tim Pearl Trademarks SnagIt is a trademark of TechSmith Corporation. Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows is a trademark of Microsoft. SQLWindows is a registered trademark of Gupta Technologies, Inc. ToolBook is a registered trademark of Asymetrix Corporation. HP LaserJet is a registered trademark of Hewlett-Packard. PostScript is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems. IBM is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation. Table of Contents Overview .........................1 About this Manual ................2 Installation Setup..........................3 Getting Started................6 Reference Keyboard Operation and Mouse Controls .........................9 Input.........................11 Output........................14 Format........................16 Options.......................18 Save Setup....................21 Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) Using DDE.....................22 Setting SnagIt Choices........22 Activating SnagIt.............24 Overview SnagIt is the screen capture and print program for Microsoft Windows 3.0. With SnagIt, Windows users can capture an entire screen, a portion of the screen or a single window or icon. SnagIt sends the captured area to a printer, the Windows clipboard or a file. These images can be pasted into other Windows applications such as word processors and desktop publishing programs. A Solution UsedSnagIt provides a simple solution to the Daily problem of importing high quality Windows screens into documentation. SnagIt is a practical, easy-to-use addition to the programs and tools utilized daily by Windows users. Documentation SnagIt allows documentation writers to Writers cut and paste Windows screens into user manuals, marketing literature, advertisements, newsletters, and other documents. Windows With SnagIt, Windows programmers can Programmers quickly create printouts of program screens, windows, and icons for presentation and review. Application SnagIt provides screen print Developers capabilities for other Windows programs. Programmers developing applications with Microsoft Excel macros, Gupta's SQLWindows, Asymetrix's ToolBook, and other tools, can activate SnagIt with dynamic data exchange (DDE) messages. DOS Users SnagIt provides DOS users with print screen capability for applications running in a DOS session under Microsoft Windows. SnagIt User's Manual 1 About this Manual This manual shows you how to install and use SnagIt and is divided into three sections. In the first section, Installation: Computer system requirements are listed. Setup instructions describe how to install and configure SnagIt. Getting Started teaches you the basic operation of SnagIt. The second section, Reference: Describes program operation, menu selections, and options available in SnagIt. Keyboard operation and mouse controls. Input, output, format, and option menus. Shows how to save the SnagIt's configuration. The third section, Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE): Explains how to use DDE messages. Contains the DDE reference that lists the DDE commands supported by SnagIt. Appendix A of this manual lists other products available from TechSmith Corporation. 2 SnagIt User's Manual About this Manual This manual was created using SnagIt and Microsoft Word for Windows. SnagIt User's Manual 3 Installation System To use SnagIt, you need: Requirements An IBM PC or 100% Compatible Microsoft Windows 3.0 A mouse or other pointer device Any printer that supports bitmaps such as an HP LaserJet or a Postscript printer Setup To install SnagIt: 1. Insert the SnagIt diskette in drive A: or B:. 2. Start Microsoft Windows. 3. From the Windows Program Manager, choose Run from the File menu 4. On the command line type a:setup or b:setup, as appropriate 4 SnagIt User's Manual Installation 5. Press Enter. The following dialog box is displayed. The SnagIt installation dialog box User 6. Enter your name and your company Information name in the User Information group box. SnagIt User's Manual 5 Installation SnagIt Installation dialog box 6 SnagIt User's Manual Installation Load 7. If you want SnagIt to load Information automatically when you start Windows, click on the check box in the Load information group box. 8. If you want to install SnagIt to the Window's default directory and the Accessories group, choose Ok. If you wish to install SnagIt to a different directory or group than shown, enter the name of the new directory or group name and choose Ok. Note: If you leave the group option blank, SnagIt is not installed in any group. In this instance, you can run SnagIt using the File Run command from the Windows Program Manager. SnagIt User's Manual 7 Getting Started In this section you will learn how to use several of the basic features of SnagIt and create your first screen print. Loading SnagIt 1. Start Microsoft Windows. 2. a) If you configured SnagIt to load automatically during the setup step, you will see the SnagIt icon displayed at the bottom of your screen. b) If you did not configure SnagIt to load automatically, load SnagIt by selecting the SnagIt icon from the group selected during Setup. c) Execute File Run from the Program Manager and enter the path to SnagIt and press enter. Using SnagIt You can use SnagIt to print the entire screen, a selected region of the screen or a single window. Our Getting Started example will show you how to select the input and output choices to send a full screen to the printer. First, restore SnagIt by selecting the SnagIt icon. SnagIt Main menu 8 SnagIt User's Manual Getting Started The SnagIt window shows the menu and the current settings for the program choices. Selecting the For our example select the Input menu Input Region item to view the list of SnagIt input choices and select Screen as the input region choice. SnagIt Input menu Selecting the Select the Output menu item to view the Output Choice list of SnagIt output choices and select Printer as the output destination choice. SnagIt Output menu Capturing the To start the capture process, send the Screen screen to the printer, press [Ctrl][Shift]P simultaneously. SnagIt User's Manual 9 Getting Started While SnagIt is busy printing the following message box is displayed. To cancel the printing operation, select the Cancel button in the message box. A message box will be displayed with the message "Output canceled by user." If the printout is canceled a portion of the image may have already been sent to the printer and will print. Printing a To illustrate a second SnagIt feature, Region select Region from the Input menu choices. Press [Ctrl][Shift]P simultaneously. The cursor will change from an arrow to cross hairs. Use the cross hairs to select a region by holding down the left mouse button and dragging the cross hairs to the lower right corner of the region you wish to capture. Release the mouse button. The region you selected will now be output to the printer. Complete descriptions of the menu options are available in the Reference section of this manual. 10 SnagIt User's Manual Reference This section of this manual describes the mouse buttons, keyboard commands, and the features and options of the SnagIt program. Mouse Buttons A mouse is required when using SnagIt. Left Button - The left mouse button is used to select SnagIt menu options and to select screen regions and windows. Right Button - The right mouse button is used to cancel a region or window selection. Keyboard The following keyboard commands are used Commands in the operation of SnagIt. Ctrl][Shift]P - Activates SnagIt printing. [Ctrl][Shift]X - Makes the SnagIt icon or window disappear from the screen. Pressing [Ctrl][Shift]X a second time causes the icon or window to reappear. SnagIt Menu This section describes the operation of each command on the SnagIt menu bar. The SnagIt menu bar has five choices: Input, Output, Format, Options and Help. The Input option allows you to select the particular screen image, icon, window or bitmap file or clipboard content that you want SnagIt to capture. The Output option allows you to select an output destination for images captured by SnagIt. Output options include the printer, a bitmap file, 7 SnagIt User's Manual 11 Reference monochrome TIFF file, or the Windows clipboard. The Format option allows you to change how the SnagIt image will appear in finished form: monochrome, color, or gray scale. The Options choice allows you to select from a number of additional features offered by the SnagIt program including alert beeps, color boost, scaling, and clipboard chaining. The Help option provides information about each menu selection. 12 SnagIt User's Manual Input The Input menu is used to select the screen, window, or bitmap file or Windows clipboard content that you want SnagIt to capture. SnagIt Input menu Input options 1. Select Input on the SnagIt menu. 2. Select from the following options. Screen Select Screen to capture the entire screen. Window Client Select Window Client Area to capture Area only the client area of a single window. The client area is the content area inside the window borders. The client area does not include the borders, title bar, menu bar, scroll bars or the caption line. After you press [Ctrl][Shift]P, select the client area you wish to capture by positioning the pointer anywhere in the client area. Press and release the left mouse button. SnagIt User's Manual 13 Input Entire Window Select Entire Window to capture a complete window including the borders, title bar, menu bar, scroll bars and the caption line. After you press [Ctrl][Shift]P, select the window you want to print. Press and release the left mouse button. Window To select the window you want, not Selection Tip smaller windows such as buttons or icons, select the title bar. Items within a window, such as the Ok and Cancel buttons, are actually small windows. Therefore, if you select one of these items, that item will print, rather than the entire window. Region Select Region to capture a rectangular region of the screen. After pressing [Ctrl][Shift]P, position the pointer to the upper left corner of the region to capture. Press and hold the left mouse button while you drag the pointer to the lower right corner of the region. A rectangle starting at the upper left corner will follow the pointer, outlining the selected region. Release the mouse button. 14 SnagIt User's Manual Input Bitmap File Select BMP file to capture an image stored in a bitmap file. When you press [Ctrl][Shift]P, SnagIt displays a dialog box requesting the file name. Enter the file name. Choose Ok or press Enter. Bitmap files are graphics files generated by some paint programs, SnagIt or other Windows programs. Bitmap files have a file extension of "BMP." Clipboard Select Clipboard to capture the contents of the Windows clipboard. Items are placed on the clipboard by using SnagIt or the cut and copy commands in other Windows programs. SnagIt User's Manual 15 Output The Output menu is used to select the destination for the images captured by SnagIt. SnagIt supports the following destinations: SnagIt Output menu Printer Choose Printer to send the captured image to the currently selected Windows printer. Clipboard Choose Clipboard to send the captured image to the Windows Clipboard. Bitmap File Choose BMP File to send the captured image to a bitmap file. TIFF File Choose TIF Mono File to send the captured image to a TIFF file in the Intel format. Note: To select TIF Mono File, you must first select monochrome or gray scale from the Format menu. 16 SnagIt User's Manual Output Naming After you capture an image, SnagIt Destination displays the following dialog box asking Files for a file name. Enter a filename. Choose Ok or press Enter. SnagIt User's Manual 17 Format SnagIt provides three different format options: Mono-chrome, Color, and Gray Scale. Select the format choice from the Format menu. SnagIt Format menu The following format choices are provided. Monochrome The input image is converted to monochrome before it is sent to the output destination. The intensity threshold level determines the amount of black and white that will appear in the output image. When you select Monochrome, the following dialog box for setting the Intensity Threshold is displayed. Intensity Threshold dialog box 18 SnagIt User's Manual Format When Microsoft Windows converts a color image to monochrome, it converts the background color to white. All other colors are converted to black. As a result, too much of the image is now black. To prevent this, SnagIt uses an intensity threshold to control the ratio of black and white resulting from the conversion process. SnagIt looks at the intensity level of each pixel and converts higher intensities (lighter colors) to white and lower intensities (darker colors) to black. This conversion process usually results in a more even balance of black and white in the output image. The amount of black and white is controlled by adjusting the Intensity Threshold value. Color All color information for the selected image is sent to the output device Gray Scale Gray scaling is an alternative to monochrome conversion.When Gray Scale is selected, colors are represented by shades of gray. SnagIt can represent colors with 256 levels of gray. The shades of gray are determined by the intensity level of the colors. Caution: Gray scaling is a pixel by pixel process and can be very slow. You may want to experiment with gray scaling by printing a small region of the screen before printing the whole screen. You may also want to enable the Alert feature under the Options menu to let SnagIt User's Manual 19 Format you know when the gray scaling process is completed. 20 SnagIt User's Manual Options The Options menu provides additional features for SnagIt users: Alert, Clipboard Chain, Color Boost, and Scale. SnagIt Options menu Alert Set the Alert option to have SnagIt signal you with a beep(s) when it has completed processing. There is an alert option for both input and output processing. The values entered for these fields determine the number of beeps. This feature is particularly useful when using the Gray Scale option. Alert dialog box Clipboard ChainSetting the Clipboard Chain option causes SnagIt to print each time new information is sent to the clipboard. SnagIt User's Manual 21 Options Clipboard chaining is useful for printing a screen from a DOS session. When you press the [Print Scrn] key in a DOS box, Windows copies the screen to the clipboard. If you have selected the clipboard chain option, SnagIt automatically copies the image to the printer for you. Note: To select Clipboard Chain, the input device must be set to Clipboard, and output device must be set to Printer. Color Boost Color Boost is used to adjust the color intensities for red, green, and blue portions of each pixel. This option may be used for color separation, brightening, or darkening the output image. When Color Boost is selected, a dialog box is displayed for color boost values. Color Boost dialog box 22 SnagIt User's Manual Options You may control the intensity for each pixel in two ways. 1.Increase or decrease intensity levels of each color by a percentage (saturation) by using the slider bar. 2.Add or subtract intensity levels (hue) for each color range by entering a value from -255 to 255. The default value for each additive range is zero and the percentage bar is 100%. To activate color boost, click on the "Use Color Boost?" check box. Color boost is used to change the intensity of the colors. Increasing the boost value lightens the output. SnagIt performs color boost before gray scaling or monochrome conversion. Therefore you can use color boost to lighten or darken the output with those options as well. Scale The Scale option allows you to enter an integer scaling factor that is applied to the input image. With a scaling factor of 2 the output image will be double the size of the input image in dots. With a 300 dpi laser printer, a scale of three (3) is a good place to start. SnagIt User's Manual 23 Options Scale dialog box 24 SnagIt User's Manual Save Setup SnagIt can save all of the currently selected options from each SnagIt menu. The Save Setup option is located under the System Menu. SnagIt System menu You can access the System Menu by pressing [Alt][Space] or by selecting the Close Box (minus sign) in the upper left corner of the SnagIt window. Save the current configuration by choosing Save Setup from the System Menu. When you save the setup, SnagIt writes all of the current settings to your WIN.INI file. SnagIt then uses the saved setup each time it is loaded until you save different settings. SnagIt User's Manual 25 Dynamic Data Exchange SnagIt supports Windows Dynamic Data Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). You can invoke SnagIt Exchange Use from other Windows programs by sending SnagIt DDE Messages. For instance, you can write an Excel macro that will print a portion of the screen using SnagIt. For more information concerning please see the DDE section in the Software Developer's Kit reference book "Windows Guide to Programming." Initiating a To initiate a DDE session with SnagIt, DDE Session send a DDE_INITIATE message with the application parameter of "SnagIt" and the topic parameter of "System". Setting SnagIt SnagIt's Set command configures SnagIt's Options operation in the same fashion as though choices were being selected from the menus. Usage: [set ("string")] Example: Set the Input menu choice to Region. [set ("input region")] The parameter string must be one of the following strings: input screen (input = screen) input client (input = client window) input window (input = entire window) input region (input = region) input file (input = BMP file) input clipboard (input = clipboard) 26 SnagIt User's Manual Dynamic Data Exchange scale n (option scale = integer > 0) output printer (output = current printer) output file (output = BMP file) output clipboard (output = clipboard) chain b (option chain = True or False) boost red, green, blue (option boost = Enabled) boost off (option boost = Disabled) add red, green, blue (option boost = Enabled) add off (option boost ² Disabled) inalert n (option alert input = value) outalert n (option alert output = value) window hide (hide SnagIt) window show (unhides SnagIt) SnagIt User's Manual 27 Dynamic Data Exchange Activating SnagIt's capture process is started by SnagIt sending a DDE_EXECUTE command with Snag message: Usage: [snag("string")] Example: Snag the client window, handle 0x43B, to the selected destination [Snag ("client handle 0x43B")] The string parameter must be one of the following: empty or null (equivalent to [Ctrl][Shift]P) clipboard (get image from the clipboard) screen (get the image from the screen) filename (get image from BMP file) x y (get entire window under the point) client x y (get client window under the point) handle h (get entire window from handle) client handle h (get client window from handle) tx ty bx by (get region between two point Note: All numbers may be decimal or hexadecimal. Hex values must start with "0x 28 SnagIt User's Manual