Picture copying oddity-Overlooking something?

R

rjhowie

Active member
I have been using the Paint programme for a long time and the copy and paste function works fine However today I seem to have a zilch with Trainz.

I used the usual Print Screen button but when I try to paste into Paint all I get is a black screen. Have tried it with a picture of the screen and with my photographs to make sure it was working and that is okay. But the damn thing stubbornly refused to do anything when I try to copy route pictures for a website. Am I missing something in the obvious here?
 
Maybe.

PrintScreen doesn't put a picture in memory ready for you to paste into a graphics program, it puts .tga pictures in a folder called ..\ScreenShots - at least it does with TRS2004.

So you need to look in that folder and process the .tga pics in there into a format and size suitable for your web site or image sharing.

If it's changed in whatever Trainz version you're using, then please ignore this. I'm sure someone with knowledge of the more modern versions will soon come along and sort this one out.
 
The Prt Scr key places a copy of the current scene in a graphic file and stores the file in the ScreenShots folder in Trainz. This is true for all versions of Trainz from TRS2004 and on.

Bob
 
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If it shows up all Black you might have the Colour Settings in Paint on 'Black/White' instead of Colour

Anything not White turns solid black.
 
Well I am in TRS2006 and a couple of pros here still. Regarding colour wasn't sure how you found out how it was et but out of curiosity I imported a photograph from my pictures of some friends and this appears in Paint in colour (?).

As for a Pictures Folder I don't have one and searched through all the Auran Folders. So this is obviously holding me back from getting pictures on my prospective NIR Trainz website. The most way out alternative is to copy my route build to a copy of TRS06 I have on my laptop and see if that works but it isn't what I wanted?
 
here's a short tutorial I wrote on how to take screenshots and multiple screenshots with Irfanview.

Tutorial

I hope it comes in handy.

And another on cropping

Tutorial

Enjoy
 
If I go straight the TGA file, it now just shows a white. But I've just found that to overcome that, just press PRINT SCREEN as normal, and then open a suitable program, and then just paste the image. Not sure if it works for all programs or not

Also seems to work in, M/Soft Excel, Word & Publisher.
 
I guess that making things complicated and then spending hours to finally resolve the problem gives us all some comfort, but I always prefer the easy way out.

I had never heard of TGA until I discovered Trainz. I assume most graphics programs have never heard of it either.
 
TGA is an abreviation for TARGA which is an acronym for Truevision Advanced Raster Graphics Adapter. It's a graphic file format that has been around since the 1980s. It's strength is that it has lossless encoding, can handle 8, 16 or 24 bit graphics and an 8 bit alpha channel.

Bob
 
screenshots

rjhowie2 said:
Well I am in TRS2006 and a couple of pros here still. Regarding colour wasn't sure how you found out how it was et but out of curiosity I imported a photograph from my pictures of some friends and this appears in Paint in colour (?).

As for a Pictures Folder I don't have one and searched through all the Auran Folders. So this is obviously holding me back from getting pictures on my prospective NIR Trainz website. The most way out alternative is to copy my route build to a copy of TRS06 I have on my laptop and see if that works but it isn't what I wanted?
Click to expand...

My 2006 has a 'screenshots' folder in it, as all copies of 2006 should have. Go to 2006, click it and about halway down is the folder.

Angela
 
I'm having a rather strange problem, which may or may not be related to all or some of the above....

When I take screenshots of my layouts in TC3, the resulting TGA, when opened in Irfanview, shows all the ground textures 'blackened' out though the textures on all the models such as buildings, track, rolling stock etc. seem fine.

I should emphasise that this is a problem in the screenshot - in-game all the ground textures appear to render perfectly.

This problem manifests for screenshots taken in DirectX and OpenGL, it appears to make no difference.

I've checked my graphics drivers and they appear to be up to date.

I'm in Windows 7 64 bit, if that makes any difference.

I wonder what can be going on? :confused:

Paul

(PS. I'll post some screenies in the Screenshot forum.)
 
rweber95 said:
TGA is an abreviation for TARGA which is an acronym for Truevision Advanced Raster Graphics Adapter. It's a graphic file format that has been around since the 1980s. It's strength is that it has lossless encoding, can handle 8, 16 or 24 bit graphics and an 8 bit alpha channel.

Bob
Click to expand...

Well having worked with graphics almost all my computer life, TARGA managed to avoid me and I'm deeply indebted. In the 90's we used TIF for lossless graphics but it was impossible to place a single TIF file on a floppy. We were stumped until the 100 meg Zip Disc was introduced in the Mid 90's. Funny how I've used 100's of Graphics companies and publishers since 1975 and the word TARGA was never, ever mentioned as a means of sharing image files. It must be an American thing, it certainly never made it big in Australia.
 
Tried that tutorial you kindly put up Johnk but I am still getting nowhere!

It will not let me use Ctrl+f11 as a key (?). When I go backspace and try to do an alternative it will not let me type anything in. If I just try to go on anyway I get a black screen still.

Angela I do not have that folder. I know because months ago when I had a query on pics I mentioned I didn't have it and have -looked again. All the other folders are there - Local, World, etc but definitely not that one I should have.

This is very frustrating as i can't get pictures up to show.

Bobby
 
Hi Bobby,

Ctrl-F11 is selected by default. All you need do is go to

options/capture screenshot and hit the start button. IrfanView should minimise to the system tray.

Test it by hitting ctrl_F11 and IrfanView should reopen with a screenshot of the page you're viewing.

Regards

John
 
Here's a simple thing you can try:
1. Go to this website:
http://fly.to/matthias-holzer
2. Click where it says "hier" (here in German I think) to download the 24kb program.
3. Toss the program in an empty folder somewhere and run it. (No setups to worry about.) The program will run minimized so you won't see it's window pop up, but it'll be on the taskbar.
4. In Trainz press PrintScreen. In addition to saving a file to the screenshot folder that it's supposed to do, it also copies the image to the clipboard. FSScreen should catch that and save it to a bitmap whatever folder you put it in. It'll also clear the clipboard afterwords.
5. Save the image as a jpg using whatever program you want. (Paint will do, though GIMP is better and able to handle TGA files.)
6. Upload to Imageshack, Photobucket, or whatever.

And now that I've written all that, it occurs to me that the Vista/Win7 file system virtualization might be to blame for the missing screenshots. (The screenshots folder may be stored in a different folder.) A workaround for this would be (as I understand it) to run Trainz as administrator.

Edit: Oh, and one reason I think TGA is used for games like Trainz is that it's not patented. No patent, no royalties to pay. According to Wikipedia TGA is widely used in the video/animation industry. I've known about the file format for a long time. Probably the earliest I used it was for Descent 3 level creation.
 
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Hi EdrickV

it still seems a shame to introduce so many different elements when one program (IrfanView) does the lot with a single keystroke. Plus "Save" of course.

 
Bobby

If you have no ScreenShots folder then create one, see what it does

C:/Program Files/Auran/TRS2006/ScreenShots

then go into Trainz and hit PrnScr and see if you have created a file in ScreenShots folder
 
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