If you are writing a training manual, or want to use an image created in another program for another screen saver (or whatever), you may find Screen Capture an easy method of obtaining the image you need.
I use a multi-screen setup which is problematic when using the System's screen capture "f-key" (command-shift-3). The System's version saves all of the screens in one PICT and this can take up a considerable amount of disk space. Furthermore, I have to go into Photoshop to edit the captured screen down to the actual image I need. I got tired of this routine, so I created Screen Capture and PICT Viewer (known as Screen Capture). By capturing a screen scene on the main monitor, then loading the image back into the program, I can crop the image to exactly what I need — before I go into Photoshop. The cropped images require much less memory on my disk, so I can make and save more images at one time than I could before. Since I usually need to resize the images to a smaller size to fit on a page, the 72 dpi resolution is not a handicap — I change the resolution to 144 dpi in Photoshop when I resize to 50%. This resolution is adequate for printing. Furthermore, as soon as an image is loaded into the program, the file can be trashed before the cropped image is saved — this is very convenient where disk space is a premium.
Specifics...
Screen Capture requires System 7.
Screen Capture can be launched by double clicking on the application, double clicking on file saved by Screen Capture, or by dragging a file saved by Screen Capture onto the application's icon (drag'n'drop). The main window will appear and then an "About Screen Capture..." dialog will appear. The camera in the middle of the mock desktop will "snap" a picture, the flash will "wash out" the window, which will gradually "develop" with credit information added. This dialog will automatically dismiss itself after 25 seconds (or so), or you may dismiss it by typing a key or clicking the mouse. At this time, double clicking on a file (or drag'n'drop) will not automatically load the selected file.
There is only one menu item available from the menu bar, and that is "Quit" (not counting "About Screen Capture... from the Apple menu). You can also quit the program by clicking in the GoAway box in the upper left hand corner of the window (not very Mac-like).
The window is one of my own design — designed to facilitate movement around on the screen to convenient locations. You will notice that there are two boxes in the upper right hand side of the window. One has an inverted triangle and the other has an arrow pointing up and out (when first launched). Clicking on the inverted triangle will pop up the program's menu. The options are: Capture Screen (command-C); View Picture (command-V); Save Window As...(command-S); and Clear Window (command dash). [Note: using the command equivalents will cause the cursor to respond automatically, move to the appropriate menu, "pop" the menu, and select the item chosen. If you register this program, you may request that this feature be removed—send a disk and a self addressed stamped mailer—of any kind— and I will send you a modified copy.]
The zoom box will point up and out in the "user state" and down and in, in the "zoomed state."
The scroll bars along the screen edges, also of my own design, will operate as expected, except: when you drag the "thumb" (slider) there will be no dragged gray rectangle, the thumb is updated in real time—the cursor will disappear while the mouse button is down in the thumb, and the thumb effectively becomes the cursor, the image in the window will also scroll in real time; and, next to the up and down arrows, there is a little black rectangle—clicking in this rectangle will "snap" the image to that end of the scroll. Notice also, that if you click in the "page up" and "page down" areas (in the area between the arrows and the thumb), the arrow will highlight the direction—not done in standard scroll bars.
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Selecting Capture Screen will present a small dialog box at the top of the screen asking for how many seconds delay you wish. The minimum delay is 2 seconds, and the longest is 90 seconds. YOU CANNOT TYPE IN THE NUMBERS. Click on the number and drag up or down to set the time delay. You may type the Return or Enter keys to accept the screen capture, or click on cancel to dismiss the dialog.
If the screen capture is accepted, you may move any process (application, desk accessory, control panel, etc., etc.) to the front and execute what you want captured (an open menu, dialog, or whatever). After the designated time expires, the screen snapshot will occur. You will notice when this happens — the cursor will disappear momentarily (if you want the cursor to appear in the picture, you will have to draw it in yourself in another program). The PICT file will be saved AS SOON AS Screen Capture becomes the foreground process again. A small window will appear with "Saving Screen...", and a stylized timer cursor will appear indicating the save is in operation. If for some reason (usually not enough room on the disk) the file cannot be completely saved, it will be automatically deleted. There is no Save As... dialog, the program saves the files in the same folder (or at the same file level) as the application. It automatically counts the number of PICT files in the folder and creates a file with the name of "Picture " with the number of PICT files in the folder plus one concatenated to the name. (This may change later.)
WARNING: ALTHOUGH THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN TESTED, IT COULD NOT BE TESTED WITH EVERY PROGRAM ON THE MARKET. I WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR DAMAGED OR LOST FILES. USE THIS PROGRAM ONLY ON COPIES OF THINGS YOU WANT CAPTURED UNTIL YOU ARE SURE IT WILL WORK WITHOUT INCIDENT.
The View Picture feature will open any PICT file even those saved with JPEG compression in Photoshop. If you are trying to open a PICTure that was saved at high resolution, it will take some time to open it ( be patient—about two to three minutes for large files — they will open at their designated bounding rectangle. ) If you need to open VERY large PICT files, it may be necessary to quit the application, select Get Info from the Finder's File menu, and set the Prefered Size to one or two more Megabytes (or more) of RAM. Screen captures for a "standard" 13-inch color monitor will occupy approximately 21-350K of disk space but will require about 1.3Megs in memory for a full color monitor (32-bit Quickdraw on a 24-bit monitor). Resetting the monitor depth in the Monitors control panel to 8-bit (256 color/b&w) will save considerably on RAM.
Clicking inside the window's content area will allow you to use the "hand" scroll a picture (no command or option key required).
Screen captures with large expanses of the same color will save as a much smaller file than complicated colorations will, hence the discrepency between 21K and 350K (it wasn't a typo).
Most of the time, you will not need to save the entire screen image. Select View Picture to open a saved image and scroll the image and resize the window to crop the image to exactly what you want saved. Then select Save Window As... and you will be presented with the standard file dialog to save the image with a name of your chosing. ONLY THE IMAGE WITHIN THE VISIBLE WINDOW BOUNDARIES WILL BE SAVED (very much as if you had used a selection rectangle). A small window will appear with "Saving Window..." and the timing cursor while the image is being written to disk.
Clear Window will reset the program to the same window size and placement as when the program openned.
Tech info...
Files are loaded into an offscreen buffer (the entire PICT file — and hence the necessity of large amounts of RAM for this program) with the same depth as the monitor and immediately closed. You may trash a file at this point with no detriment to the program (make sure you save what you want, though). If a PICT is opened for a monitor with less resolution (aka, screen depth) than the original file was saved, Saving As... will have an effect of lowering the resolution of the saved image. Saving As... on an image with lower resolution than the monitor will save the PICT at the higher resolution, but will not improve the image any.
The program's window will automatically resize itself to the size of the picture, if the picture will fit within the screen's boundaries, or to the largest size allowed by the screen.
Scroll bars are always active to allow you to move any part of the picture to the upper left hand corner of the window to allow cropping (by resizing the window to enclose the desired area). Similarly, hand scrolling is always active. Hand scrolling always updates the scroll bars in real time.
Opening a new file while another is in memory will either a) resize and clear the window if the new window size is different from the last window size, or b) maintain the old window size and image until the new file is loaded offscreen, then copied to the window. Scroll bars will automatically be reset to the origin when a new file is loaded.
Scrolling is very fast, all things considered (depth of screen, etc.).
Just for grins — you can drag around the timer dialog box by clicking in the upper left hand corner (around the cross on the 'T'). You are not supposed to be able to do this with a modal dialog — this program does a lot of things its not supposed to.
The timing cursor ticks at quarter second intervals, completing a revolution in 2 secs. This is accomplished by using the time manager (none of this start and stop routine with the watch cursor). If this program should crash during a save or load operation, this cursor will keep on ticking like nothing has happened. Therefore, you need to be watchful...if after two or three minutes on a large file, or about 8 seconds for small files, if the image hasn't opened, watch your hard disk light, if it periodically comes on, the program is still working, otherwise, it has died and taken the System with it (only a lock up, though, you will need to restart the machine). As I said, I have tested this program and feel that it is stable, but I could not test it with everything — that crashing thing happened in former incarnations. Watch out for memory conflicts. On a full color 13" RGB monitor, this program needs at the very least, 1.75 Megs. 2Megs is probably minimal and, as with everything else these days, more is better (for viewing and cropping operations). Adjust for larger monitors accordingly. Full color requires 4 bytes per pixel times the horizontal resolution times the vertical resolution, e.g. 640 times 480 times 4 = 1,228,800 bytes of memory, plus what is needed for the application, about 128K, for a total of 1359872 bytes or 1.328Mbytes, plus enough room to open up a PICT file for spooling: 1.75M for 13" color. An 8-bit (256 color) monitor only requires one byte per pixel. 16-bit monitors, 2 bytes.
If you to change the monitor depth to take advantage of the memory savings, adjust the Monitors control panel setting BEFORE launching Screen Capture. The code to adapt to monitor depth changes was not included in this version.
Screen Capture uses a very efficient method of getting and saving pictures. By spooling to and from files, additional memory use is held to a minimum.
Bug reports can be sent (to the above address) so I can pass on the information, but if I don't own the conflicting program, there is little chance I can make the fix.
