Screen capture

[Peter S]

I would appreciate it if anyone can give me some advice on the best way to get a good quality panoramic map into one of my shows.

I have a digital mapping programme that allows me to show 1:25000 scale maps at various zoom factors on my screen 1290 x 1024. I have tried capturing images using Freestone, saving them as Tiffs, joining the individual captures in Photoshop and saving as JPG. The results are not too bad but are less clear than I would like. My objective is to produce a moving map (following Lin's and Thedom's previous work) and that's why I want a panoramic map built up from these TIFFS.

Any suggestions as to how to improve my process and results would be much appreciated

Many thanks

Peter

[Lin Evans]

Hi Peter,

There's no valid reason to save captures as tiffs, better to just save them as JPG's then do whatever join work necessary in Photoshop.

I don't know about the quality level used by Freestone, it may be very high or not depending on the particulars and whether or not there is a setting. Just because a file is saved as a tiff it doesn't "necessarily" have high quality if the actual "capture" quality was not sufficient or, of course, if the screen resolution wasn't fantastic. The latter doesn't seem to be a problem, but why don't you download Snagit and try it (it's free to try for about 30 days) and see if you get better results.

best regards,

Lin

I would appreciate it if anyone can give me some advice on the best way to get a good quality panoramic map into one of my shows.

I have a digital mapping programme that allows me to show 1:25000 scale maps at various zoom factors on my screen 1290 x 1024. I have tried capturing images using Freestone, saving them as Tiffs, joining the individual captures in Photoshop and saving as JPG. The results are not too bad but are less clear than I would like. My objective is to produce a moving map (following Lin's and Thedom's previous work) and that's why I want a panoramic map built up from these TIFFS.

Any suggestions as to how to improve my process and results would be much appreciated

Many thanks

Peter

[DanielSmith]

i have used kind of screen capture software called ACA Capture Pro, i think it can handle it .

here is an article about it:

Capture Video Screen

[bmccammon]

try saving the screen captures as BMP files rather than tiff. The BMP captures I get from Freestone are quite good when the original screen image is clear and detailed. Like Lin says, if the original screen image is not good you'll end up with a good capture of a poor resolution original. Good luck.

[Conflow]

Hi Peter,

I'm not too sure what type of Maps you are trying to capture ?.....Are these Ordanance Survey Maps

or Satellite Panoramic Maps ? or Google Earth Maps or Microsoft Maps or AA Maps.

I ask because I also had problems with Map Screencaptures. Some capture very well, some don't, but

having said that I came up with some 'techniques' which have proved successful but they depend on the

type and printing method used to reproduce the Map and your Monitor settings before you capture.

Let me know what type you are trying to capture...

Brian.Conflow.