File menu help

New - CTRL+N - creates a new image document.

Open - CTRL+O - opens an existing image document.

Open features:

Notice that you can specify not only types of files to look for (filtering out other types) but you can specify how many pages to open within the program's workspace. In addition, there's a preview pane on the file open dialog that will give you a look at the image (perhaps greatly reduced, depending on its original size).

This lets you use the Open dialog to navigate through large folders of files, choosing the one you are looking for, even though you might not know its name.

Close - closes an opened document. If you've changed it but not saved it, you'll be asked if you wish to save your changes. If you've made a capture, but have not altered it, the capture will be discarded silently with no request to save it, unless you somehow edited the image.

Save As - CTRL+S - saves an image to a specified file name. You're presented with several options here that vary, based on the file type you select. These include the color bit depth, whether or not the file is to support transparency, and so forth. You can set the defaults for this box by defining each and then clicking on the "Save settings" box. That can save time later, when you may be doing heavy, repetitive work with many captures.

• If you check the transparent box, the color currently defined as the background color will be set to transparent. Only certain file types support this special property, for example GIF and PNG files.

• HyperSnap-DX 5 cannot append to a file format that does not support this feature. Append is typically only supported by GIF or TIFF formats.

• If a feature (such as Progressive or Interlaced) is not supported by a format, that feature will be grayed-out and not available for selection. Experiment with the various settings using an image with which you are familiar and you'll get the best feeling for what each setting accomplishes and how it changes the final output.

Jumping labels:

The label for the Progressive or Interlaced function changes depending on which file type you're saving. If you choose JPG, the label changes to Progressive (a feature JPG supports). If you're saving to GIF, the label changes to Interlaced (supported by GIF).

Quality issues:

For example, a quality setting of 50% for JPG images is probably fine to e-mail a picture of your Airedale "Sparky" to a friend, but for something you'll be printing on a high-resolution color printer, you'll usually want the maximum quality available, such as 90% or even 100%. Leaving this setting at Keep Current and it won't attempt to alter the image's bit depth.

• If you choose to save to GIF, which doesn't support color depths over 8 bits per pixel, HyperSnap-DX 5 will do the best it can to match a higher-depth image when it decreases the available colors downward.

• If you check the option Select Best, the program will try to reduce the file to as small a size as possible without removing any colors that are in use. So if size is not an issue, Keep Current is probably the desired setting. If you're attempting to reduce the image's size to as small as possible but maintain quality, choose Select Best.

Upload to FTP Server - this slick feature lets you upload the current image to an FTP server to which you have "write" access. It will bring up the FTP server dialog, which contains several important settings. If you'll be going to use this feature, you should read the help available from the link below prior to trying to use it.

Acquire - connects to a compatible scanner or other image acquisition device and retrieves images from the device. You must have a Twain-compatible image acquisition source for this to be available. This menu item will load the software used by your device, and the resultant scans (or image downloads, for example from a digital camera) will appear in HyperSnap-DX 5's application workspace.

Select Source - this item lets you choose from available compatible scanning or image generation sources connected to your system. When you select Acquire, above, that controls the acquisition of images of the device chosen here.

• If you only have one device, this function will only offer one selection.

• If you have multiple image creation devices, such as both a camera and a flatbed scanner, you can change the "active" device used by HyperSnap-DX 5 by selecting it here.

Scanner issues:

Some scanners come with their own scanning software (in addition to their own drivers), and some software (like CorelDrawÖ) will install scanning software "on top of" the scanner's drivers. How well these packages work with HyperSnap-DX 5 may vary. In general, the scanning package that came with the scanner (or its latest update) will probably work the best.

If you encounter problems, and see multiple choices in the list for Select Source, but only have one scanner or imaging device, try to pick the software that was shipped by the scanner maker.

Print - CTRL+P - prints a document to your active printer. The printout will use the page setup options that you define in the Page setup dialog, discussed below.

Print Preview - displays the document on the screen as it would appear when printed, including proper proportioning, headers and footers, and other page-layout features.

Page Setup - selects page printing options. HyperSnap-DX 5 has extremely powerful page setup options. These include the standard items such as determining the paper size you want to use (make sure the printer is loaded with the same paper as you specify here) and advanced items such as reversing the black and white content during the printing process. You can examine the Page setup dialog itself, or click the Page setup button below to pop up its help section.

Printer picking:

This menu item (and its corresponding toolbar button) is where you'll select the printer you want the program to use, if you have more than one printing device. Your default printer may be a black and white laser, but you may have a color photo type printer that you'd prefer HyperSnap-DX to use.

Send by Email... - you can tell Windows to send the current image (which you'll be asked to save if you have not) to another party via Email. Obviously you must have Email for this to work.

During this process, a dialog will appear that lets you choose the file name to use, the file format to use, and other options. The functions here are similar to those you use during file saving operations, and should already be familiar to you. To speed transmission of E-mailed images, you might want to send highly-compressible image formats such as JPG, which can be very small but still look quite good. Formats such as BMP are often large, and if you have a slow E-mail connection, may take a long time to transmit.

Email settings:

These must be properly established for this function to work, mainly relating to MAPI functions. Should this menu item fail, the cause may be that your system doesn't have the correct E-mail components installed.

Sometimes installing Outlook Express (which comes with most Windows versions) will repair this common error.

Users of other E-mail products should check their outbound protocol and server settings and see if they are MAPI-compliant in the event they get an error message when attempting this function.

If you do not have a default E-mail client established, this menu item will not work properly.

Set as Wallpaper - this lets you choose to set the current image as your Windows wallpaper. Before you can set an image as your system wallpaper, you must first save it as a Windows format bitmap, the exception to this being Windows XP which will automatically translate JPG files into wallpaper.

During this process, you can specify (if you want) the file name to use, or you can browse to choose an existing file name and overwrite that name. From the Set as Wallpaper dialog you can set several properties for your system wallpaper, such as how it will be displayed.

• Choose between Center (which displays it smack in the middle of your desktop), Tile (which multiplies it as many times across and down as required to cover the desktop), or...

• Stretch (which elongates the image across both vertical and horizontal dimensions to make it cover the desktop).

If you want to remove the selected wallpaper, you can click the Remove Wallpaper button.

Exit - exits HyperSnap-DX 5. You'll be prompted to save a changed image if you have not already done so. Any changes you've made to background color, foreground color, highlight color, and other tool settings are saved automatically when you exit.

• The last instance of HyperSnap-DX to exit establishes your configuration, so make sure all other instances are closed if you're changing things and want them to "stick" between sessions.