Merry meet!
The old grizzled wizard had planned on getting this scry out early this month, but it seems the silicon deities had other plans. I ended up having to replace my PC last weekend. While I like getting new toys, I was quite comfortable with my old system and it seemed to be meeting my needs quite adequately. So this was more of an exercise in patience than anything else, as I was scrambling to reinstall my myriad applications and make the system feel like home again. Enough about that I suppose. Suffice it to say I'm back in business and happy again.
This month's scry will be a bit of a departure from all things RoboHelp HTML.
It seems that every time I decide to include images containing the "torn edge" effect, I get several inquiries asking how in the world I managed to get that effect. I never realized how many of you thought it was as cool looking as I do.
Well, I decided it was time to shed some light on it!
Enter the ripper
TechSmith software makes an absolutely wonderful little product called SnagIt. I think it was version 7 that introduced the "Torn Edge" effect.
This software falls into what I call the "Screen Capture" class of applications. I'm pretty sure that I utilize about 1/1,000 th of the application's potential, but I'm happy with it and as long as it easily does what I need, I'm a very happy camper and I consider my $39.95 well spent.
TechSmith offers a 30 day free trial of SnagIt, so before proceeding with this scry, you may want to hop on over, download and install the free trial so you can follow along. However, be forewarned, it can be VERY addictive and you may well find yourself saying "how have I lived this long without this utility?" and merrily entering your credit card number to get your very own copy.
Preparation
While I know that SnagIt is an image capture application, I'm quite content and happy to use other tools for acquiring my images. For example, I'm quite pleased with the results the little Graphics ReSizer application that ships with RoboHelp provides. I've not seen any better or simpler way of scaling down images.
However, I tend to run at the maximum color depth possible. I know that if I capture an image, the Graphics ReSizer application will fuss if I simply try to paste the image.
To work past this, I first open Windows Paint and paste the image there. Then I simply copy it from Paint back to the Windows clipboard and paste it into the Graphics ReSizer. Don't ask me why, but it works. I suppose Paint must reduce the color depth to an acceptable level for the Graphics ReSizer.
You may know that Windows Paint is capable of directly saving an image in .GIF or .JPG format, but I choose to save from the Graphics ReSizer. Why? Because it does a MUCH better job of reducing the color depth for saving as a .GIF image. As an example, the image above was saved from the Graphics ReSizer application, while the image below was saved as .GIF directly from Windows Paint.
Believe it or not, this is one of the BETTER images I've seen Paint save this way.
Okay, we have our image, so let's get to work. For this example, I've copied the Help > About dialog from the Windows Notepad application. I've reduced the image size to 80% and saved from the Graphics Re-Sizer application as .GIF format.
Start the SnagIt application.
From the SnagIt menu bar, click Tools > SnagIt Editor. The SnagIt Editor screen appears.
Click File > Open (or press Ctrl+O) Navigate to the desired image, select it and click the Open button. The image should open in the editor.
Click Effects > Edge Effects > Torn Edge.
Voila! The image now has a torn edge! Easy, huh?
Wait just a doggone minute there, Mr. Wizard. This image doesn't look like yours!
Ah, I see you are most observant. Most observant indeed!
This is a little trick I happened to stumble across. It provides a pretty neat effect. Now that you have your nifty torn edge, you might think you are finished. I'm not sure if it was happenstance or what, but for some reason, early on I decided to try applying the effect a second time. Pleased with the results, I tried a third time. I find that applying the effect three times provides a nice looking result.
Here is the image above with the effect applied a second time.
And the image with a third application of the effect.
That wraps it up for this month. Hopefully it's now perfectly clear as to how to easily get your very own nifty torn edges.
Until next month...
Merry part!
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