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Douglas Bailey wonders: <<Is there a way to make a screen capture into a
purely vector-based format? Or perhaps to convert a screen cap bitmap into
vector? I was thinking this would make scaling easy, since text readability
would be preserved....>>
It's easy to convert a bitmap into a vector image, but not easy to do well.
Most modern graphics software offers an "autotrace" feature that recognizes
such things as lines of pixels and converts them into vector lines and
recognizes closed loops of pixels so it can convert them into circles or
polygons. Unfortunately, the software works poorly for recognizing that
things like elevator bars are (mostly) identical recurring fill patterns,
and converting those fill patterns into the same description the graphics
software would use to define a fill. Similarly, the autotracing doesn't
recognize that type belongs to a specific font and convert it into that
font; instead, it mathematically creates a description of each individual
character so it can convert it into a series of vectors--on those rare
occasions it recognizes the character as a character rather than a random
collection of lines or pixels. The result? Often a file so huge and complex
that it's next to impossible to redraw the graphics at a new resolution.
Some day, a clever programmer will address these shortcomings (e.g., by
applying OCR technology to bitmapped fonts), but for now, an autotraced
graphic still requires considerable work to convert into a vector graphic.
In most cases, you're better off sticking with a bitmap and using software
such as (Wextech's?) "Smooth scaling" to resize the graphic. Alternatively,
learn to use software such as Photoshop to resize screen captures
appropriately; usually, even-numbered fractions (1/2, 1/4) work pretty well,
but you'll have to experiment with each image to see how its unique
properties affect the reduction you can achieve.
--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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