PICTify is a control panel that provides you with screen capturing capabilities and is provided FREE of charge. You may capture the entire screen, a selection that you define, the frontmost window, or a pulled-down menu (including popup menus) to a file or to the clipboard. If you choose to save the snapshot to a file, you have the option of saving it to a TeachText™ PICT file or to a ResEdit™ file which will contain a 'PICT' resource and a couple of other resources which define the dimensions of the PICT. I find the latter option essential for capturing pictures I've drawn to include in about boxes or other parts of my programs.
INSTALLATION
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To install PICTify, drag the control panel to your System Folder. You will be asked if it should be placed into the Control Panels Folder. Reply 'yes' to this and the control panel will be moved to the Control Panels Folder. Restart your Macintosh.
A brief description of important keys can be viewed by clicking the "Title" area of the control panel (not the titleBar of the control panel window). This area is a picture that looks similar to what you see at the top of this document.
USE
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PICTify is invoked by pressing the keyboard combination that you specified via the control panel (which defaults to COMMAND+SHIFT). You can then choose what and how to save the snapshot following these simple instructions:
• To save an area you define:
1) Press the key combo. The cursor changes to crosshairs.
2) Click and drag the mouse to define the rectangular area you want to capture.
3) Release the mouse button. A camera shutter sound will be heard.
4) A save dialog will appear. At the bottom you will see two file options that you can save to. They are represented by icons of those files. The highlighted icon represents which filetype the snapshot will be saved to (TeachText being the default). Click on the icon to select the filetype you desire.
Fig 1. The save dialog.
5) Click the "Save" button after navigating via the filelist to the location to which you want to save the file. The file will be saved.
NOTE: To save to the clipboard instead of a file, press the 'C' key before you do step 3 above.
• To save the entire screen:
1) Press the key combo. The cursor changes to crosshairs.
2) Press the 'S' key. Follow steps 4-5 above.
• To save the frontmost window:
1) Press the key combo. The cursor changes to crosshairs.
2) Press the 'F' key. Follow steps 4-5 as mentioned under saving an area you define.
Fig 2. What saving the frontmost window captures.
NOTE: Again, if you press the 'C' key BEFORE the 'S' or 'F' keys above will cause the snapshot to be saved to the clipboard instead of a file.
• To save a pulled-down menu:
1) Select the menu you wish to capture.
2) Once the menu appears, press the key combo that invokes PICTify. Crosshairs appear.
3) Proceed using steps 2-5 as described under capturing an area you define, making sure that the area including the menu is selected.
That is all there is to use this simple utility. There was a request to add exporting of the snapshot to TIFF or GIF formats. Although I considered doing this, it was dropped because it was beyond the scope of this project (meaning it would require more effort and time than I had to devote to doing it--did I mention that this is a FREE utility? ;-)
I welcome any suggestions, comments, or bug reports you may want to send.
SPECIAL THANKS: Peter Eisenmann, Don Sherman and Sherman Wilcox
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Release History
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Version 1.5
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- Revised template information added to the resource file when a snapshot is saved to a ResEdit file. The new template contains not only the global coordinates, but the height and width of the snapshot in pixels.
- Added ability to capture application menus.
- Fixed problematic trap patching.
Version 1.01/2
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- Added B&W compatibility
Version 1.0
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- First public release
Please forward any comments and bugs to the following online accounts:
