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Getting an image out of a windows program that doesn't export.

Brief

I needed to get a screen shot of a circuit schematic from a digital design program called Xilinx. It does not export its schematics, only will print them. I got sick of screen capuring through windows, and some of the schematics were just too big to capture in one window.

This is a similar problem to exporting autocad drawings to a nice format to print with if you dont have access to print drivers and nice plotters.

Ideas

  1. Screen Capture
    Snagit is a really good program.
    http://www.techsmith.com/products/snagit/download.asp
  2. Post Script export
    Adobe has a nice print driver that prints Post Script!
    Install it as though you have a printer on a local port, then go into the control panel and change it to print to file. When printing, choose the advanced options and choose a standard format in the "post script output options" box, such as EPS. This only does Black and White.
    http://www.adobe.com/products/printerdrivers/windows.html
  3. Printing (color) to an image file
    I found a company that makes a printer driver that prints COLOR to an image file! Check it out at :
    http://www.blackice.com/download.htm
    In the programmer section, you'll find printer device drivers for all versions of windows (32). Then make sure you have lots of memory, set it to 24bit and jpg, and high resolution . The demo verison has a little blurb on the top of every image that is easily removed in photoshop. (Probably want to clean up the image anyways)

Xilinx Specific Notes

Xilinx prints either a full sheet, or current view. So the best thing to do is to do an Edit / Select All, then just print selected. For the color driver, #3 above, make sure that you save it at a slightly higher than low res, so that when you edit out the parts you don't want, it's not too grainy. And make sure you resize the image!! I know for me the default size was something like 4000x3000 , which needless to say is a little big. Try doing a "soften" on the image BEFORE resizing, if you are using MS Photo, Photoshop, Gimp, PSP ...etc.
Also my home version of Xilinx has an option in the Print dialog about only printing in B+W, turn that off. And try checking Tile on 4 pages option. Chances are your schematic will only be on one of the 4 resulting images.

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If this information helped you, consider exiting through your right. ©2000-2013 Max Baker
Sun Apr 27 22:32:34 2008 PST