Large Screenshots....1900*1200 advice needed

I'd seriously consider having the user recapture the screens. You're going to go from about 1900 * 1200 to approximately 960 pixels wide x (you do the math :) ) The reduction of nearly 50%, even using photoshop is going to cause a major reduction in quality. For some tutorials, that might be okay. But some other uses - such as interactive simulations where the user must read all the screen text - it's probably going to have very poor usability for end-users.

With my SMEs who do captures, I always have them capture at a size where I know it's going to work. We or I test things out with some sample captures, put them into Captivate, and make sure everything's a go before they capture the rest. Sometimes that's just having them set their monitor to 1024 x 768 and maximizing the window. Other times, I have them install a freeware app (i.e. Browser Resizer by RJL Software) where you can specify the exact size of the window via numeric width/height values.

In some cases, you can get better resizing by playing around wit the DPI setting of the original capture. Most capture tools are set at say 96dp or 144dpi. You can set your capture tool for something like 192dpi or 288dpi or 384dpi and in some cases, this increased density will make the picture "relatively" smaller. Set the dpi before doing the capture. Resizing may be better from the increased fidelity. It is not a sure thing that this will work out, but this is worth a try when you capture the images with your screen snap tool and a quick experiment will answer the "picture quality" question.

Joe C.

If you don't want to create a CP project at that size, then you need to
resize the images down - right? The best way to resize images is to just
use Photoshop (or similar) that can retain decent quality while doing
so. Make sure the image is not 'Indexed' or 8-bit when resizing..and be
aware any such resizing will result in some blurring. But P'shop does a
lot better a job than CP itself.
So P'shop/resize your screenshots and bring them into the CP project.

Do remember that you'll have browser 'chrome' around the project...so if
you're shooting for a 1024x768 monitor, make your images proportionately
about 95% smaller so there's room for those images, the CP file, and the
web browser toolbars on the monitor.
Cheers,
Erik

GrenadaV wrote:
> What is the best way to handle images of this size/resolution to
> come up with something half decent without spoiling the images or having too
> much zooming?

--
Erik Lord
http://www.capemedia.net
Adobe Community Expert - eLearning
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/
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