Question

Topic: Other

How To Make Screen Grab Images Print Ready Quality

Posted by Anonymous on 9/9/2013 at 7:18 AM ET 250 Points
I have some documentation that i need to professionally print. The docs contain some screen grab images that are not of good quality - but they are needed for the doc. Can i make them a better quality? Any ideas?
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  • Posted by Moriarty on 9/9/2013 at 8:01 AM Accepted
    May I ask why you are using screen grabs? Usually to allow faster loading it means that the image needs to be small - and enlarging them will not enhance their quality. There are edge sharpening tools in Adobe software, but these cannot improve the focus or quality of an already poor image.

    About the only thing I can suggest is to open the image directly from the website's server - not in the webpage you found - and make the image as large as possible using ctrl&+ (strg on a German keyboard). You could see from the image data if there are other resolutions available. You could ask the website owner if they will send you a better quality image.

    Does this help any?
  • Posted on 9/9/2013 at 8:08 AM Author
    Hiya, the screen grab is from within a product - cant think of another way of capturing the image?
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 9/9/2013 at 8:36 AM Accepted
    https://www.tvmcalcs.com/blog/comments/high_quality_screenshots_for_print/
    https://ian.umces.edu/discforum/index.php?topic=261.0
  • Posted by Moriarty on 9/9/2013 at 9:19 AM Member
    You can go to the image of your choice, right click and choose the option to "save image URL" you can open another tab and paste it in. You may find that they've used a larger format picture and resized it for their website.

    This is from my own site https://thecatswhiskers.nl/308-dutch-train.jpg

    Then you can resize the image using ctrl and + to make it bigger - but this will not enhance the original quality of the picture. Doing this with mine, twice the size it's acceptable, more not. That is because it's around 400px in size. You cannot refine to the level of half a pixel. Computers can't cope with halves. Only ones and zeroes ;-)

    Does this get you any further?
  • Posted on 9/9/2013 at 9:24 AM Author
    Thanks, this is not for a web image - its a screen shoot of a product
  • Posted by Moriarty on 9/9/2013 at 10:08 AM Member
    Sorry, I misunderstood this. You have a screenshot of a product. Does that mean you have the image in your computer database as a jpeg?
  • Posted on 9/9/2013 at 10:13 AM Author
    Yep i have pngs and jpegs
  • Posted by Moriarty on 9/9/2013 at 10:26 AM Member
    How (in general) did you obtain them? Were they supplied by the product owners?

    Let's put this the other way around - are there any images of these products online that you could use which would be better quality? This takes no notice of any copyright issues ...
  • Posted on 9/9/2013 at 10:27 AM Author
    Ah i see where you're going..no the product is ours......they dont exist anywhere else
  • Posted by Moriarty on 9/9/2013 at 10:39 AM Member
    Okay, so you have the images on your computer, of a product that's your own. I'm presuming that these products are something you can't easily photograph? Whatever the reason (which I don't need to know). If feel as if I'm missing a piece of the puzzle.

    As mentioned, there are edge sharpening tools in Adobe software, but these cannot improve the focus or quality of an already poor image.

    How is it that the images were poor in the first place (you don't need to answer this, it's just me mulling). If a client supplies me with images are of a poor quality, I simply ask for another one to be taken; usually the client's fine about this.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 9/9/2013 at 7:37 PM Accepted
    Really, it's probably easier simply to re-photograph the products on white backgrounds. If the images are iffy to begin with, sadly NO AMOUNT of toying or coaxing in Photoshop will turn a small 72dpi image into a large, 300dpi image. Ideally, and for decent image quality, images placed into a page layout program need to be 300dpi TIFFs rather than saved as.pngs or jpegs.
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