Paper edge problem

With the release of TNT v. 2.0 the EC Software screenshot program has become a serious application in its own right, so it was high time that it was given its own forum!

Moderators: Alexander Halser, Tim Green

Post Reply
SteveBarnett
Posts: 86
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:16 am
Contact:

Paper edge problem

Unread post by SteveBarnett »

I've taken several screen shots using the "paper edge bottom right" option set. What I was execting was that the "torn off" corner would be painted in the background colour selected (white). What happens in reality is that it comes out very light grey. (You can see the difference between the background of the image and the background of the capture window).

Problem is that I then copy and paste the image in to a Word document and the grey background comes with it, making it look a little unprofessional.

Is there a way to get a white background in the torn off bit?

I'm using the lateset TNT 2.
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Unread post by Tim Green »

Steve,

I'm not quite sure what's happening here -- if you select white in the Background Color: field in the Capture Mode controls panel the background should be white, not grey (unless you're talking about the drop shadow, which is always grey, of course). You might just get this effect if you capture with one screen color resolution and view it in another, but I don't think this is what you're doing... :?

Could you post a small example here so that we can see exactly what you're talking about? (You can include a screenshot in your post here with the new Add Attachment field at the bottom of the editing screen.)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
SteveBarnett
Posts: 86
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:16 am
Contact:

Unread post by SteveBarnett »

I've attached the screen shot. It's very faint, but you should be able to see that the entire lower right area of the screenshot is slightly grey, while the "background" is white.

The second screen shot shows just the lower right corner of the image, where you can see the contrast between the two colours.

I can't see it is to do with screen depths or anything like that, as I can see the grey background in the TNT window itself. I've not tried putting these images on another machine, so everything should be working at the same colour depth.

Sorry about the file size; I used jpg to try to keep it down.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
SteveBarnett
Posts: 86
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:16 am
Contact:

Unread post by SteveBarnett »

This is the second screen shot - I didn't realise I could only attach one at a time. This one is just the lower right corner, showing the contrast between the white background and the part of the image that I expected to be white.
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Unread post by Tim Green »

Steve,

Hmm... I see what you mean, but I can't reproduce it at all, my background is always precisely the same as the screen white, with no visible seam. Is it possible that your background color is set to "not quite white"? Click on Background Color: and then Other Colors and check that your "white" is set to:

Hue: 160
Sat: 0
Lum:240
Red: 255
Green: 255
Blue: 255

BTW: You can add up to three attachments to one post. To do this just click on the "Add Attachment" button before posting. Then it is added to your post while editing, after which you can add another one before clicking on Preview or Submit.

PS: GIF or PNG are much better for screenshot graphics than JPG, which is only really good for photographs and other continuous tone images. You generally never need more than 256 colors for screenshots, and for that GIF is fine.

PPS: I've reduced the size of the original screenshot a little -- you can still see the problem clearly and this makes it easier to display for people with low-resolution screens.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
SteveBarnett
Posts: 86
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:16 am
Contact:

Unread post by SteveBarnett »

Tim,

That's the definition I have for "white". However, I also checked my display adapter settings and I'm running 32-bit colour depth. I've just dropped it to 16-bit colour depth and my backgrounds are white again!

I guess TNT isn't handling 32-bit colour depth too well. Since I don't need this resolution, I'm more than happy to sitck with 16-bit (and probably the performance improvement that will come with it).

I used to use GIF for my screen shots, but gradient fill title bars come out very blocky, so I gave up on it. PNG just never occurred to me because I wasn't too sure of the support that Word had. Perhaps you're right and I should switch to that format.

Thanks for the help.
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Unread post by Tim Green »

I'm glad you found a solution but this is still a little strange. I have my work computer set to 32 bit (Matrox G550 Dual Head) and my whites are fine. You might like to check with EC about this at support AT ec-software.com.
Last edited by Tim Green on Wed Mar 02, 2005 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
User avatar
Alexander Halser
EC-Software Support
Posts: 4098
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 7:24 pm
Location: Salzburg, Austria
Contact:

Unread post by Alexander Halser »

The problem is known. However, there's no easy solution to that. It results from that fact that you either save your image as a GIF file or as a bitmap with 256 or less colors. In both cases, the true-color screen shot gets converted to 256 colors which means that color values are rounded to the next available value. And the next available value for a "white" background, isn't exactly white. At least not always. If you save the image as a bitmap in true color format, the background is exactly white (RGB 255,255,255). PNG with true color is also fine and JPEGs are true color anyway. It is a problem if you use GIFs which are generally limited to 256 colors.

When I come across this problem - and I do from time to time - I open the screen shot in another image editor that supports explicit color depth settings. I reduce the colors to "256 colors including the default Windows palette colors" which creates an entry for "exactly white" as well. Then I select the true white and flood the edges.

So, why don't we implement this in TNT, you may ask. TNT doesn't support explicit color depth settings (except in the save dialog) because it works with device independent true color bitmaps. The color depths is required for almost every image effect - from the soft shadows to partial transparency to the smoothed edges of the callout bubbles. If we allowed to reduce the image to less than true color, TNT could no longer apply the effects.
Last edited by Alexander Halser on Wed Jan 28, 2004 11:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Alexander Halser
Senior Software Architect, EC Software GmbH
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Unread post by Tim Green »

Alexander Halser wrote:It is a problem if you use GIFs which are generally limited to 256 colors.
Of course...I should have thought of that, it's a problem I've had several times as well. :shock:

BTW Steve, note that what your bitmap images are converted to when you compile your projects (in HTML Help and browser-based HTML) depends on the settings in Project > Project Properties > HTML Export Layout > Image Conversion.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
SteveBarnett
Posts: 86
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:16 am
Contact:

Unread post by SteveBarnett »

Alexander Halser wrote:The problem is known. However, there's no easy solution to that. It results from that fact that you either save your image as a GIF file or as a bitmap with 256 or less colors.
I wasn't actually saving the file. Immediately after taking the screen shot, I copied it to the clipboard and paste it in to MS-Word. Also, I could see the grey background in TNT itself. Could it be that TNT assumes a 256 colour bitmap? If so, can I change that?

The images I uploaded to this thread were jpg files, saved from TNT and they show the problem, so I suspect my problem isn't a file format problem, but is more likely a video card issue. Since dropping to 16-bit colour solved it, I'm not unhappy. :lol:

Steve
User avatar
Tim Green
Site Admin
Posts: 23155
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 9:11 am
Location: Bruehl, Germany
Contact:

Unread post by Tim Green »

I wasn't actually saving the file. Immediately after taking the screen shot, I copied it to the clipboard and paste it in to MS-Word. Also, I could see the grey background in TNT itself. Could it be that TNT assumes a 256 colour bitmap? If so, can I change that?
Hmmm...look in Options > Customize > Auto Save and check whether "Automatically save screenshots to disk" is set to GIF. If it is, that's the cause of the problem, because TNT will then immediately convert to GIF after capturing, and GIF only has max. 256 colors.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
SteveBarnett
Posts: 86
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:16 am
Contact:

Unread post by SteveBarnett »

I don't automatically save the file, so the option isn't checked. When I'm creating help files I prefer to have some control over the file name and when I'm producing ad-hoc documentation, I just copy and paste the images in to Word, so I've never used this feature.

ec-software have just emailed me a new dll to test and it appears to have fixed the problem. Presumably, they'll make it available to those people who have the problem.
User avatar
Alexander Halser
EC-Software Support
Posts: 4098
Joined: Mon Jun 24, 2002 7:24 pm
Location: Salzburg, Austria
Contact:

Unread post by Alexander Halser »

Alexander Halser
Senior Software Architect, EC Software GmbH
SteveBarnett
Posts: 86
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 10:16 am
Contact:

Unread post by SteveBarnett »

Brilliant, thank you. :D

Steve
Post Reply