Capture tab

This tab controls the core capture functionality. You will probably find yourself changing these parameters more than any other settings tab items.

Delay time before the capture - the default is 500 milliseconds, which would be a half second. If you set this to 1000 milliseconds, it will wait a full second, and so forth. Find a value that gives you the time you need to get things "in order" for the capture.

Include cursor image - check this to capture the mouse pointer or cursor in your image. Great for showing those 1, 2, 3 step explanations such as in software documentation. Capturing a cursor is fairly simple. The easiest way to capture it is by using hot key to actually initiate the capture: minimize HyperSnap-DX window and move your cursor to the exact position where it should be captured. Next press the hot key combination to start the capture, for example: Ctrl+Shift+R for "Region" capture. Note that cursor image gets "burned" into the desktop - now you can move the mouse to outline your capture area, the cursor will be there exactly as you see it.

If you are using HyperSnap-DX menu or toolbar button to start a capture, this is more difficult. Here are the steps for including the cursor in a regional capture (which, if you think about it, shouldn't be able to include the cursor because you're using the cursor to draw the region).

  1. First outline and execute a region (or multi-region) capture without worrying about where the cursor is.

  2. Verify that the capture came out as you wanted in HyperSnap-DX 5's window, and if it's OK, minimize HyperSnap-DX window to the task bar.

  3. Move the cursor over the screen where you want it captured as in the previous "region" capture.

  4. Press the F11 hot key to repeat the last capture.

  5. The same region will be re-captured again, this time with the mouse cursor in place.

Jumping hot keys.

If you changed the default hot key assignment, you must press your current "repeat last capture" hot key instead of F11.

Auto-scroll window during Window capture - check this to automatically scroll the captured application's window. It scrolls long pages with a vertical scroll bar, allowing you to capture more than you can see on the screen. In general, leave this function disabled unless you absolutely need this functionality.

Auto-scroll limits...

This function doesn't work for all applications that have a vertical scroll bar. Some applications erase the marks that HyperSnap-DX 5 draws over the window it captures while scrolling. These marks allow it to find out how many pixel lines the window was scrolled during the scrolling interval. If these control marks are erased, HyperSnap-DX 5 has no way of knowing how much data to capture, so it gets lost and gives up the ghost.

In such a case, it will display an error message and capture what it could without scrolling. The most popular web browsers (Netscape and MS Internet Explorer) work well with auto-scroll, and many other programs tested well with it. However it may not work with programs who handle the screen in a method hostile to the control mark method.

Here are the steps for making an Auto-scroll window capture. Please read them carefully before attempting an Auto-scroll capture.

  1. Make sure the Auto-scroll option is enabled.

  2. Have the target window ready, with the vertical scroll bar set to the top, or to the place where you want to start the Auto-scrolling capture.

  3. Select Capture / Window from HyperSnap-DX 5's menu, or press the "capture a window" hot key Ctrl+Shift+W.

  4. Move your mouse to the middle of the document that you want to Auto-scroll capture and click the left mouse button inside the document.

  5. Watch how HyperSnap-DX 5 scrolls the window, and as it does this, it draws horizontal marks over it.

  6. The capture is complete. Examine the contents of HyperSnap-DX 5's window to make sure it captured the contents correctly, and save the file using the name you wish to use.

If you want, you can abort this process early by left-clicking the mouse or by pressing any key on the keyboard. If you elect to wait until it finishes, the window will scroll until all of the available text has scrolled into view and has been captured. On some documents, remember, this might be very, very long resulting in a huge capture that consumes much memory (or disk space).

Auto-scroll refresh time - sets the rate at which the window will be scrolled during capture. A smaller number causes the screen to be scrolled faster, a larger number causes it to be scrolled more slowly. You may have to adjust this figure to obtain the results you desire from the capture.

Show help and zoom area during region capture - checking this shows context sensitive procedural help during region captures. Once you know how to execute these procedures, you can uncheck this to remove the help screens from your desktop.

Default region shape - you can pick the type of region you want to capture here. It does not have to be rectangular, drop down the list to examine the possible choices, and select the one you wish to use for the default shape.

Start multi-region capture with - choose from either a Window or Control selection, or a user-selected Region to begin multiple region captures. For example, you can choose to grab a single application window as the first region, and then snag a freehand-specified region off of that for the next portion.

Background color for non-rectangular and multi-region captures - since these types of captures by definition are "irregular," and documents must all be regular in shape, you must specify a color to fill the areas between the captured regions or windows. White is the default color. You can select this background color with the following button on the drawing toolbar:

Background/Transparent Color button

Play sound when making the snapshot - checking this enables the camera sound HyperSnap-DX 5 plays when you execute a capture (or when you press Print screen, if you've enabled it to capture that standard Windows function). The sound lets you know that HyperSnap-DX 5 is "at work" rather than the standard Windows clipboard screen capturing functionality.

Hide HyperSnap-DX window before capturing screen - Check this to have the HyperSnap-DX window automatically hide itself before capturing the screen. Turn this option off only if you need to capture HyperSnap-DX window itself.

Restore HyperSnap-DX window to front after the capture - if you usually like to work with your captures right away after making them, checking this will cause the program's window to "pop up" with the most recent capture as the active document, ready for any work you might want to do with it.

Capture layered windows - Keep this option turned on to capture "layered" windows. These are those oddly shaped objects such as Microsoft's Office Assistant, or other partially-transparent or translucent windows. Probably the only situation when you want to turn this off is if you've got buggy graphics card drivers, which might give you scrambled pictures when capturing with this option on.

Do automatic paste, print or save ONLY if a new capture is different from the previous one - turn this option on if you also have enabled any of the following options:

  1. Automatic paste or print on Copy & Print tab.

  2. Automatic save on Quick Save tab.

...and you want only to paste, print or save new captures if they are different from the previous capture.

Even a slight difference in only one pixel of the new image will trigger the paste, print or save action.