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.
Stamp
creation / Edit tabs
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.
Image tab
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.
Text tab
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.
Frame tab
Frames are 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.
Placement 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.