Improved screenshot capabilities

Not essential must-haves, but timesavers for HOL/Lemon contributors etc...

Save as type
Instead of just .BMP allow to save as .PNG, or for added completeness .GIF (however with GIF being old and licensing/colour-reduction issues this is probably best avoided).

Auto-prefixing
Instead of saving screenshots as 01.bmp, 02.bmp etc... allow the user to specify a prefix in a option box - e.g. "ShadowOfTheBeast". It would then save screenshots as ShadowOfTheBeast01.bmp, ShadowOfTheBeast02.bmp etc...

//EDIT - ANOTHER IDEA

Screenshot from debugger
A option to take a screenshot from WinUAE's debugger would be nice - e.g. command "SS shadowofthebeast.bmp" would save what was currently in the WinUAE window to that file. When the debugger is active it's impossible to grab the contents of the WinUAE window even printing the whole screen. Sometimes I use the debugger to add breakpoints and line up a perfect screenshot - which of course I cannot take

[BippyM]

Or use the filename of the first disk in the drive (if there is one)!

Originally Posted by bippym

Or use the filename of the first disk in the drive (if there is one)!

A bit hit & miss as WinUAE is not smart enough yet to know what you are screengrabbing.

You could have "Ami Vol1" in your floppy drive yet be taking innocent pics of your Workbench setup

[fiath]

BTW - I don't think there are any licensing issues with GIF anymore, the patent on the LZW algo ran out...

[andreas]

Originally Posted by Jim

Not essential must-haves, but timesavers for HOL/Lemon contributors etc...

I disagree.
I *do* prefer unresized raw images as HOL contributions to any sort of compressed stuff.
It's mainly the HOL team's task to render them to viewable images.

Instead of just .BMP allow to save as .PNG, or for added completeness .GIF (however with GIF being old and licensing/colour-reduction issues this is probably best avoided).

Naw.
I want maximum flexibility, hence saving in .PNG will COMPRESS the image and make it unsuitable for (re-)resizing.

Imagine this little story:
Someone contributes a MIA rarity screenshot that is only available in PNG.
Much later, we find a likewise rare compilation with this game.
Can you guess what will happen? Well, since a compilation can e. g. have a number of 5 games, this screenshot will have to be re-resized so that it fits on the compilation screenshot.
I do not have to point out in detail how much difference in quality a source screenshot in BMP vs. an already compressed one in PNG will make, do I?

[girv]

I want maximum flexibility, hence saving in .PNG will COMPRESS the image and make it unsuitable for (re-)resizing.

Saving as PNG will compress the image data yes, but PNG is a lossless format so you will lose no detail by doing this.

Or have I missed the point?

Originally Posted by andreas

I do not have to point out in detail how much difference in quality a source screenshot in BMP vs. an already compressed one in PNG will make, do I?

Yes you do. Many of us would love you to do this Go on, I'll send you 1000 Euro's if you can do this.

[Codetapper]

Just to clarify, there is no difference (aside from the huge filesize difference!) between a bitmap and a PNG. The only time this isn't the case is if you specifically save the PNG with less colours than the original had but I can't see why anybody would do that!

/me suspects Andreas will be freeing up several gigabytes of hard disk space over the holidays as he batch converts all his .bmp's to .pngs

Originally Posted by girv

Saving as PNG will compress the image data yes, but PNG is a lossless format so you will lose no detail by doing this.

Or have I missed the point?

You are right. Perhaps auto resizing may be a loss in cases that you'd like to store the screenshot with its original size but I doubt this is what andreas means. I still wouldn't call a loss because the difference between a normal screenshot and a hol screenshot is simply the doubled size if you are using a doubled screenmode.