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G
GeeC
Participant
March 3, 2010
Question

Snagit images distorted in Captivate 4

  • March 3, 2010
  • 2 replies
  • 5343 views

Until yesterday I was using Captivate 2.0 and successfully pasting snagit screen captures into Captivate slides without any  distortion.  Now that I have upgraded to Captivate 4.0 all Snagit images paste very pixelated or blurry.  At this stage I am very keen to head back to 2.0 as a solution.

This topic has been closed for replies.

2 replies

S
ScottPakis
Known Participant
March 3, 2010

I've seen this problem before in Flash. When importing images different than 72 dpi it can cause problems. Windoze by default DPI setting is set to 96 (Mac Users don't have such issues, as usual). Snagit captures also at 96 dpi and Flash/Captivate are expecting 72 dpi so the image can appear shrunken with degraded quality.

There is a setting in Snagit that allows you to change the resolution. Don't have it on my PC now but I'm sure you can find this setting. Then when you import it shouldn't look bad.

HTH!

S
ScottPakis
Known Participant
March 3, 2010

You can also change the dpi in Photoshop from the Image Size menu.

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
March 3, 2010

Hello,

It would be a pity to get back to CP2, so many features have been added since. This is certainly due to a resolution issue.

Hope you do not mind a suggestion: it is never a good idea to copy and paste images such like that (have been working with digital images myself since more than 15 years). I'm not using snagit myself, but it should be possible to save the screenshot in a digital format, isn't it? If you have the choice: go for PNG - 24bit. Then insert the image in Captivate (Insert, Image) or import it into the Library.

Could you try that? And report back about it? If your issue is not resolved, please try to atttach a small example, I'll have a look.

Just trying to help,

Lilybiri

A
Anonymous
March 3, 2010

I am working with Captivate v4 and Snagit v9.1.3. I agree with Lilybiri about not using Copy/Paste from Snagit to CP. I used to to this and got same poor results. Now I use Snagit's option to save the image (as) and then use Captivate's option "insert/image" and that work OK.

However up to now I have always been saving images in Snagit and importing them in to Captivate as JPEG's. Sangit has the option to save images as PNG and I will try that to see if the quaility is better,

but my question is: Are PNG images larger than JPEG images? I import a lot of images and am always under pressure to keep my project as small as possible.

Noel

Staffordshire

England

Lilybiri
Lilybiri
Legend
March 3, 2010

Hi Noel,

Your question seems simple, but the answer is not as simple.

I'll try to explain not too extensively why personally I prefer PNG24, but mostly it will result in a slightly bigger filesize. But:

  • JPEG has lossy compression, which means digital information is 'thrown away' every time you open and again save the image. You can choose the level of quality, but even at maximum you'll never have the same quality as with a PNG. I'm teaching some Photoshop to Real Estate students. And the first tip I'm insisting on is: if your digital camera delivers JPEG, please save immediately the original, and never work on it several times. Work on a copy, and preferably change the format to PSD.
  • JPEG doesn't support transparant pixels, PNG24 (just like GIF) can have transparant pixels (which means that this could lead to smaller file size in case of images with transparant pixels).

For background slides in CP the BMP-format is used (bigger file size, more information) but for images (got the suggestion from Adobe team) try to go with PNG24. If you are using an image several times, import it in the library and drag it from there.

Of course if the quality of the image is not that important, perhaps you could even use GIF (if you can live with its limitation to 256 colors, but with support of transparant pixels).

Sorry if this post is too long (did not intend to), and not quite well explained, but you 'touched' one of my favourite subjects.

Lilybiri

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