.HOW TO POST SCREENSHOTS
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A screenshot is what it sounds like. A shot or captured picture of the screen when you are playing Transcendence. See the Transcendence Picture thread for some really excellent images.
First of all download IrfanView and PIXresizer. I've used these two programs for ages and had no problems with them, and they're free. Please recommend other programs if they work well for you.
Next find the Print Screen button on your keyboard. It can be abbreviated to things like PrtScrn or even PrSc.
Now get Transcendence to the point where you want to take the screenshot. For this example I chose the Transendence loading screen at the beginning of the game.
When the screen came up I pressed the Print Screen button once. Only press it once. It usually doesn't look like anything has happened but your computer will remember what the image looked like. On my computer the cursor arrow blinks once when you do it but you have to be looking for it to see it.
Now start IrfanView. You will see a blank black screen. Go to the 'Edit' button at the top left of the screen and click on it once. A drop-down menu will appear and not far from the bottom of it you will see 'Paste". Click on 'Paste' and , like magic, the screenshot image will appear where the blank black screen was.
Now don't panic, like I did the first time, because of the white grid squares that covers the image. That is only an overlay to help people who want to change the image. It won't appear on the saved image.
Relax, the white grid isn't permanent..
Next go to the 'File' button at the top left of the screen. It's directly to the left of the 'Edit' button. Click on it and another drop-down menu will appear. Near the bottom you will see 'Save as...'. Click that and a save menu will appear.
Two things here. One, at the top it says 'Save in:' You will need to remember where you saved the image later when you are uploading it. In my case it says Desktop because that's where I do most of my computing.
Two, name the image. IrfanView will usually call it 'Clipboard 123' or something like that as a default name. I recommend saving the picture with a name that means something to you. In my example I called the picture "Trans loading screen". Easy to remember and fairly descriptive.
Click the 'Save' button at the bottom right of the Save menu and the image is now saved to the Desktop.
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Now we can either resize the picture to make it smaller or leave it as it is.
Screenshots on my computer normally are from 50 to 200kB. This isn't huge for a picture (they can run to many MB) but George has to find memory for everything that goes into the forum and that costs money. So let's help him out.
I usually resize my screenshots down to 50% because I use screenshots to report bugs. The size or quality of the image isn't that important. This brings the picture size down to 30-50kB and more importantly makes the picture small enough to fit nicely into a forum post. Screenshots normally, as you would expect, are the same size as the screen which is a little bit too big for the forum by the time you put the name of the poster and the border in there as well.
My personal opinion is to put a smaller picture in and if someone really likes it they can PM you to get a larger better quality picture. But if it's a really great shot then put a big pic in so we can all enjoy it. Like I said before, there are some excellent images in the picture thread.
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So if you want to resize the image here's how to do it.
Start PIXresizer. You will see this screen.
Click at the top left where it says 'Load Picture". An Open menu will appear. Where it says 'Look in:' at the top make sure you are looking in the right place. In my example I need to look in 'Desktop'. Scroll down until you find your image name (for me; Trans loading screen) and click on the name. Now press Open (to the right and down).
You should now see your image in the top right of the PIXresizer screen (where the guy with the camera was).
On the left of the screen, click on 50% in the 'Select new size' section and a black dot will appear next to it. Check to make sure that the next black dot is next to JPEG in the 3rd part of the screen (it says Select file format). Then press 'Save Picture' at the bottom of the screen.
A Save menu will come up so click on 'Save' and you will be told that the saving of your new picture is complete.
You now have an image that is half the size of the previous one saved in the Desktop. It will be the same image name with (640 x 384) added onto it. In my case 'Trans loading screen (640 x 384)'
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To get the picture onto the forum I upload it to an image hosting site and then use their link to load the picture into my forum post. There are often other ways to do this in forums and if you know of a way please add it to this topic.
Okay. I use PostImage.org. It's free and never given me any problems. If you use other sites please let us know which ones are good.
When their webpage opens you have to do 2 things. Find your image using their 'Browse" button and click on 'Family Safe' upload Fortunately the only distasteful thing about Transcendence is Microsaurs and they aren't too obscene so everything should be OK
.Once you have found your image and selected Family Safe click on 'Upload Image' and wait for a few seconds. The page will change and at the bottom you will be given about 6 or 7 links. The one you want is the 'Direct Link". It should start with 'http:' and end with'.jpg' and will usually have a lot of random numbers or letters in it.
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Back on the Transcendence forum you should to be in the Post Reply, Edit Post or New Topic screen.
Move the cursor to where you want the image to appear (usually between 2 paragraphs is good) and press 'img' which is at the top of the section where you are typing in your post text.
You will see two sets of square brackets appear with' img' and '/img' in them. What you do now is copy the direct link from PostImage.org so that it is in between the two central brackets; the first ] and the second [.
So it will look like
[img]http:............jpg[/img]
It is very important that you get the direct link right in the middle. If one of the square brackets is in the wrong spot you won't get a picture to show (damhik
).Once that is done press 'Preview"and after a few seconds your picture will appear in all it's glory in the preview pane. You can add more pics in exactly the same way. You just need to upload every pic you want to put onto the forum and use it's own direct link (PostImage.org has an 'Upload Another Image' button).
If everything looks OK then 'Submit' your post Easy.
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It may be possible to cut and paste text and images straight from Microsoft Word into the forum (I haven't got Word) and I suspect that IrfanView could also resize your images. This is just what has worked for me so I keep doing it. If you have an easier way please let everyone know. Thanks.
