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Re: Help! Macintosh screen captures converting to PC
Subject:Re: Help! Macintosh screen captures converting to PC From:Max Wyss <prodok -at- PRODOK -dot- CH> Date:Fri, 17 Jul 1998 21:42:40 +0200
Melanie,
renaming the file does not do anything as long as it is in a format the PC
cannot understand.
Normally, screenshots on Mac are in PICT format. You would have to convert
them to a more portable format. Depending on what you want to do with the
format (printing, on-line), you have some choice. It also depends a bit on
which software you are using on the PC.
Another variable is the color depth of your screenshots. You can take them
at thousands or millions of colors, or at 256 colors or less.
For thousands or millions of colors, one of the more "serious" formats
would be TIFF, although it is not unlimitedly portable. However, it will
produce good output for print publishing. Other possibilities would be JPEG
(although you have to know what you are doing with this format, as it can
produce suboptimal results due to its lossy compression), PCX, BMP.
For 256 colors or less, one of the ideal formats would be GIF. PCX and BMP
are still usable, but JPEG is no longer suitable.
This conversion must be done on the Mac. If you have Photoshop available
anyway, you have a very good tool to do that, and you can also adjust the
pictures that they look good on Windoze. If you don't have Photoshop
available, you might look at Graphics Converter (which costs less and is
shareware, and does a decent job).
After the conversion, keep in mind the naming conventions for transferring
the files. Then, you should no longer have problems using the files on
Windoze.
Hope, this can help.
Max Wyss
PRODOK Engineering AG
Technical documentation and translations, Electronic Publishing
CH-8906 Bonstetten, Switzerland
Fax: +41 1 700 20 37
e-mail: mailto:prodok -at- prodok -dot- ch or 100012 -dot- 44 -at- compuserve -dot- com
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>I need help. We need to take screen prints from a Macintosh G3 computer and
>convert them to a usable format for the PC. I have images saved to a disk,
>but the PC doesn't recognize them as pictures (it does accept the disk,
>that's not a problem).
>
>Do I need to rename the files so Photoshop (or another program) can read
>them? Is this an impossible task? I need help immediately, naturally,
>because we have to get these screen captures today.
>
>Please respond directly to my e-mail address below. I'm on digest and I
>can't wait until the next one arrives for these answers. Thanks!
>
>Melanie A. Gray
>Marketing Communications Specialist
>Navistar International
>Melanie -dot- Gray -at- navistar -dot- com
>
