How Do I Capture a Screenshot?

[KonstantinMMRR]

I am sure it is easy to capture a screenshot. I have looked through the manual, and cannot find a mention of it. How do I do this?

Thank you
Dean

 

[cascaderailroad]

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?86113-How-to-post-Screenshots

Or by using the Search pane, and searching by typing in a phrase similar to: Posting Sceenshots

 

[ray_whiley]

In Surveyor, Press alt+U. Use your mouse, arrows and page up/down to compose the picture you want. Press PrtScr. Press Esc to return to normal mode.

To find your screenshot for editing, go to your Trainz folder for the version you are using and find the Screenshots folder (for 2010 this is in UserData, I'm not familiar with the versions you have registered.). You can then resize it for use as you wish eg. 240x180 as a CDP thumbnail, or 640x480 for posting in a forum

Hope this answers your question.

Ray

 

[D94R]

If it's the last thing you captured, then you shouldn't have to dig in folders to find it. Open up your pic editing software and hit Ctrl+V. Being the last thing you captured, it's at the top of your clip board (where stuff goes when you copy it) and will be the first thing that get's pasted. Then edit size, crop, rotate etc.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Interesting ! Where (what location is your clipboard anyway, in your PC ? MS\Windows\Temp ?

I have often thought: "Where is dat' dang Clpboard that I copied many tings' to" ?

 

[JackDownUnder]

I used to use Ctr+PrintSreen which puts it to the Clipboard, then open a graphics program, create New file then Past to that file.

These days I use one of two programs, Jing which may be found here http://www.techsmith.com/download/jing/default.asp, for single images, or Wink which may be found here http://www.debugmode.com/ for mutiple images.

 

[oknotsen]

People make it all way to difficult.

I am sure it is easy to capture a screenshot. I have looked through the manual, and cannot find a mention of it. How do I do this?

--> Press "Print Screen" and done.

Yes, done.
No (extra) tools needed. It is really that simple.

The screenshot can be found here:
\TS12\UserData\screenshots

 

[SuperFudd]

But some folks need to be in either DirectX or OpenGL, I forget which, for it to work.

 

[oknotsen]

But some folks need to be in either DirectX or OpenGL, I forget which, for it to work.

Interesting; I didnt know that had any influence.
That's how it works in OpenGL then; that's what I use.

 

[ray_whiley]

My reply was based on the fact that I tend to take several screenshots at one time - this is why I suggested the userdata/screenshots folder. And my suggestion of using alt+U was to eliminate unwanted material eg. everything not pertinent to the desired picture (unfortunately this does not included rolling stock direction arrows).

I don't think there is any need to know where to find the clipboard. Surely it can hold only one item at a time and when something new is copied the previous copied item is deleted?

Ray

 

[KonstantinMMRR]

Thank you. It is relatively simple once I know how it works.

Dean

 

[mezzoprezzo]

~snip~ And my suggestion of using alt+U was to eliminate unwanted material eg. everything not pertinent to the desired picture (unfortunately this does not included rolling stock direction arrows). ~snip~

Ray, the rolling stock direction arrows don't normally show in alt+U in Surveyor unless you have the Trainz 'F7' flyout selected. Checking any of the others should get rid of them.

Casper

 

[cascaderailroad]

As a note: Especially in TRS2006 which saves screenshots as TGA's (which are huge in size) ... after you have posted (uploaded) your screenshots to a image hosting site ... the original screenshots folder should be emptied as they are no longer needed, and as the size of TGA's is huge it will free up PC disc space.

I am presuming that many, many screenshots jpg's in 09, 10, 12 versions are totally unneccessary, and should be emptied out, once they have been uploaded to a image hosting site

 

[Retro00064]

I wouldn't delete screenshot files once they have been uploaded to an image hosting website. There is always the possibility that the file could become no longer available from the image hosting website, and if you no longer have the original screenshot images on your computer, then those screenshots are lost.

As for the TGA screenshots from older versions, keep in mind that the TGA has 100% quality: the image quality of the TGA is exactly the same as the Trainz screen when you were running Trainz. JPEG images use lossy compression, so they lose quality with each save. This is called "generation loss". You could kinda compare this to film, comparing the TGA to an "original", and the JPEG to a "dupe". A copy (dupe) of a film contains all the film grain of the original plus the grain of the copy. So the JPEG will not be as high in quality as the source TGA image.

Now what you can do is open the TGA's and save them in PNG format. PNG images use lossless compression, so the image does not lose quality with each save. You could probably compress your screenshot TGA's nicely by saving them as PNG's and not lose image quality.

Regards,

Zachary.

 

[cascaderailroad]

You can save them to your PC pictures file ... but regular (daily) emptying the contents out of your screenshots folder in the Trainz program is recommended.

 

[ray_whiley]

the rolling stock direction arrows don't normally show in alt+U in Surveyor unless you have the Trainz 'F7' flyout selected. Checking any of the others should get rid of them.

Thanks for this advice, Casper, I'll make sure I do this next time I do any screenshots including rolling stock.

You can save them to your PC pictures file ... but regular (daily) emptying the contents out of your screenshots folder in the Trainz program is recommended.​

More good advice, cascaderailroad - or of course to an external drive, rewriteable CD or DVD.

Ray

I've just checked my screenshots folder which I've never bothered to empty - 222MB.

 

[oknotsen]

regular (daily) emptying the contents out of your screenshots folder in the Trainz program is recommended.

By who?
And why?
With today's HD there is absolutely no reason to do so unless you have the habbit of constantly keeping your finger on the Print Screen button all the time and in that case I recommend finding another place to leave your hand during play.
Even that 222MB Ray posted is still next to nothing in todays HD world. On the partition I made for games on my 5 year old PC I still have 100+ GB space left. In comparisson: The rest of my TS12 folder is over 20GB, so a few screenshots doesnt really take that much space.

I say dont bother with emptying that screenshot folder unless the part of your HD you have your Trainz on installed has less then 5% space left.

 

[shaneturner12]

... unless it's the system drive, which requires 15% at the minimum.

Even so, to defrag a non-SSD drive, you need at least 15% space free.

Shane

 

[oknotsen]

to defrag a non-SSD drive, you need at least 15% space free.

AFAIK thats 5% (which is why I wrote 5%) or it has at least been 5% most of the last ~20 years.

But whatever it is, if you aint downloading your films to the same partition as your trainz and it aint older then ~6 years you should not have a problem. If it is older, you probably should invest in a new HD anyway as your current can start giving problems any minute now.

 

[shaneturner12]

True - hard drives have a habit of not giving much warning when something's wrong.

If it's an OEM system, it's difficult to know exactly how long a hard drive has been in a system if it's the original one.

The one thing I do know for certain is that for a system drive, you have to have at least 1GB free for System Restore, and the equivalent to at least the amount of memory installed in hard drive space for virtual memory (unless you turn it off, which is not a good idea unless the virtual memory is set on a different drive).

Shane