Snapper
Snapper makes it really easy to make screenshots. When Snapper is running, every time you press the 'PrintScreen' button, it will save a JPG image of the screenshot to your harddisk, possibly with some enhancements.
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Snapper is FreeWare by Michiel Overtoom.
Why did I write it?
I wanted some features combined in one utility, like:
- Saving the screen shot as JPG image, possible scaled-down to save harddisk space;
- An overview of the screenshots to quickly select and/or delete specific shots;
- The possibility of putting a customized title on each screenshot;
- Flight Simulator integration - when you are flying when you make a screenshot, Snapper will put your current altitude and location on it;
- Support for multiple monitors.
How to use
Put the 'Snapper.exe' program somewhere on your harddisk (it doesn't need other files, just this one).
In the future I will make an Install program.
When Snapper is running it will show in the taskbar. Pressing 'PrintScreen' (PrtSc) will capture the screen, after which Snapper writes it to disk.
Snapper's application window is divided in three tabs:
- Last snap: This tab displays the last screenshot taken.
- Settings: Here you can specify how you want Snapper to behave.
- All snaps: Shows a list of all the pictures in the current folder.
Explanation of each page follows below:
'Last snap' page
This tab displays the last screenshot taken, together with any text overlays put over it.
- Click on the picture to copy the filename of the screenshot to the clipboard.
- Doubleclick the picture to open an actual-size image view of it.
'All snaps' page
Shows a list of all the pictures in the folder you've designated as the folder to store the screenshots.
- Click on a screenshot name to copy the filename of the picture to the clipboard.
- Doubleclick a screenshot name (or the picture) to open an actual-size view of the picture in the viewer window.
'Settings' page
The settings are:
- Folder: This is the folder where Snapper will store the JPG pictures of the screenshots you make. The screenshots themselves will be saved with a filename which includes date, a serial number, and a string you can specify yourself. This makes the filename pretty unique, to minimize filename errors when uploading screenshots to a forum.
- Start names with: Here you can type your name, callsign, or any other string you'd like to see in front of your screenshot filenames. It defaults to the computer name.
- JPG quality: Move this slider to the right to increase the quality of the JPG images that are saved; remember that the higher the quality, the more space the pictures take. The default, 90, is a good tradeoff between size and quality.
- Left mouse click on tray icon makes screenshot: When checked, Snapper will make a screenshot when you click the tray icon. (The default behaviour is to open Snapper). This comes in handy when your keyboard doesn't have a PrintScreen key.
- Camera sound: A sound is played when Snapper detects that you've made a screenshot, this is for audible feedback that Snapper is actually working. The camera consists of two sounds: a shutter and a film transport sound. The shutter sound (a short click) is played as soon as Snapper detects a new picture on the clipboard; the transport sound (an electic motor whine) is played when Snapper is done processing and saving the screenshot, and is ready for the next screenshot.
- Crop: If you have a Windows desktop that encompasses multiple monitors, you might have noticed that screenshots can become pretty big! With the 'Crop' option you can specify how much of the total desktop you want to keep. In the future, this option will be enhanced somewhat, like selecting directly the monitor you want to capture.
- Save half size: Screenshots can be pretty big. When this option is checked, Snapper scales down each screenshot by 50% before saving.
- Show flight simulator location: When checked, Snapper will place a description of your current aircraft location on the bottom of the screenshot. This works only if you have Microsoft Flight Simulator running.
- Show latitude and longitude: When checked, Snapper will also include the exact geographic location of your airplane.
- Overlay text: Type any text you want to appear as a title on each screenshot. Leave this field blank to disable the overlay text.
an example of the overlay text
an image saved 'half size'
Microsoft Flight Simulator support
the actual location of your aircraft in Flight Simulator
Snapper can interrogate Flight Simulator about the actual position of your aircraft in the world. It uses this position to compare that to an internal database of airfields, and it calculates the distance and bearing to the nearest airfield. That information is pasted onto the screenshot, so you can later see where you took the screenshot, and maybe return there if there was something interesting.
For this to work, Snapper requires FSUIPC to be installed in Flight Simulator. Luckily this program is freeware, you can find it here. Snapper is an 'accredited freeware application', so you don't need to register FSUIPC. Snapper will automatically register itself with FSUIPC without user intervention. (However, should you want to register it manually, it's application key is ZWRB EBTA XTTD).
How Snapper works
Snapper registers itself with Windows as a 'Clipboard application'. When you press the PrintScreen button, Windows takes a screenshot of the current desktop and places it as a picture on the clipboard, then notifies Snapper that the clipboard has changed. Snapper detects that a picture has been placed on the clipboard, and copies it from the clipboard to a private working area. This private working picture is cropped (in case of multiple monitor support enabled), and then Snapper paints the text overlay over the picture, and possibly the location of your aircraft (if you're flying with Flight Simulator at that moment). The next step is optionally shrinking the image. After all this processing is done, the image is saved as a JPG file, and a copy is placed on the 'Last snap' page.
Download Snapper
Things to do
Many people gave me suggestions and feedback for the program. Thanks to Cory Dennert, Bill "Wild Doktor" Hagen, Marcel van Tol, Scott Gray, Rick Abshier, John Cifuentes, Claudio Carbone, David Wilson-Okamura, Luca, Nicholas, and many others.
Of course, these things should all be optional:
- Better multi-monitor support. Snapper's Crop feature is at the moment only useful for snaps from the leftmost monitor. Use a dropdown to select which monitor should be screenshotted.
- An 'install' package. People are used to it.
- Bicubic quality resize to arbitrairy size
- Dateformat in filename more sortable (YYYY.MM.DD instead of month as string)
- User configurable Logo overlay
- Single clicks (instead of the double clicks) to enlarge/view a picture.
- Option to start Snapper trayminimized.
- Website address in welcome screen.
- A facility to change typeface, size and color of the overlay and location of the texts on the screenshot.
- Using the location data as the filename.
- Using EXIF embedded information in JPGs.
- Option to pop up a dialog after taking a screenshot for modifying filenames etc.. (handy for preparing presentations, and meaningful filenames)
- Option to put additional FS info on the shot (or in an info field): FS time, flightplan, airplane, etc..
- Optionally automatically start when Windows starts (ugh!)
- Grayscaling
- Automatically delete screenshots when the program is unloaded.
- Upper limit for size of JPG files. AVSim requires <125 kilobyte pics
- Saving other formats besides JPG (for example, BMP, PNG)
- After making a snap place the filename immediately on the clipboard
- Replace the 'All Snaps' listbox with a listview with sortable columns filename, date, pixel size, file size etc...
- Delete functionality, multiple selectable filenames
Questions, suggestions
Snapper is freeware, written by Michiel Overtoom.
Mail questions and suggestions to motoom@xs4all.nl