Best format for screen shots?

[Marty Billingsley]

SimPLsol at aol.com writes:
>
> I am writing the operating manual for our first Revolution-based product and
> I could use some knowledgeable advice regarding screen shots.
>
> In the past I saved screenshots as PICT files and copied them into Word. I
> printed the Word doc to QuickDraw and Postscript printers.
>
> This time I will also be making PDFs for cross-platform distribution. Since
> PICT is a Mac-only format, would EPS (or some other format) be better?

Since you're embedding the screen shots into the pdf doc, I don't see
how the original format of the screen shot matters.

But, if you're going to keep the screen shots as separate files, here's
what I know.  My publisher (Allyn&Bacon) wanted screenshots in tiff format,
as high-res as possible.  SnapZ (http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/)
is a great utility for taking screenshots; OS X's Grab is okay too, but
not as flexible.  Both Grab and SnapZ will save files as tiffs.  Word will
import tiffs, so you can use it to create the pdf docs.  Other page layout
programs (PageMaker, inDesign, Quark) also have no problem importing tiffs.

Don't know what you'd use if you needed to make PC screenshots.....

  - marty

--
Marty Billingsley (marty at ucls.uchicago.edu)
The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools