#\:D/ : Screenshooting, cursor too

...with IrfanView

While Snipping Tool still delights me, today I learned to Capture a Screenshot with IrfanView that shows the mouse cursor! ... \:D/

In brief:

Open Irfan View -> Options -> Capture/Screenshot (check/modify settings)  

-> Start -> Ctrl-F11

Settings

Capture Setup has many controls. I set the capture area to Foreground window. I left capture method at default Hot Key CTRL+F11. I left default at including mouse cursor. And after the capture show in main window of IrfanView.

Yes will need to crop

But cropping--once I realised* how (when there is an image on the canvas and no paint tools selected, just left click drag, let-go, Ctrl+Y)--is also rather nifty in IrfanView, offering (via Edit -> Show selection grid) a golden ratio grid.

*(thanks to Lord Spam Magnet & Grinler at BleepingComputers)

PS - if you were wondering

• \:D/ in title is a Happy Dance
• the screenshot for which I wanted a cursor...
  
  ...relates to a possible future post about importing+keeping Google Search results for a google portion of a literature review.

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Part of my Wordpress→Blogger journey, this post copied (because it remains relevant today) 19/07/2019 in republication of my 31 July 2015 post at my experimental self-hosted Wordpress where it achieved 24 views.

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Flight #NLS7 LANDED Post-flight check

So many things to do, ASAP:

1. Reconnect with loved ones (my lovely sons picked me up from the airport late last night)
2. Respond to anything urgent that arose while I was gone (nope, all clear)
3. Unpack & clean (mm, in progress)
4. Sit, rest, think (perhaps next weekend)
5. Thank the organisers:
   • I had a great time, enjoying theme, presentations, venue, catering*, and overall experience; so bravo to the organising committee: Amy, Jeff, Holger, Kirsty, Lauren, Heather, Rob, Liz, Jessica, Gabrielle, Melissa M, Hiba, Vesna, Sarah, Melissa S, Janette.
   • ALIA
   • & sponsors: CSU (alma mater), ALLA, Oxford University Press, QUT and Jade.
6. Transfer notes - particularly capturing Action items (see posts to follow) (or I might add to the NLS7 Etherpad Stephen Chang started)
7. Thank presenters and participants (see posts to follow)
8. Report to and thank funder (me, this time--but I may still prepare a report).

What do you do when you return from conference?

* OMG YUM - Thank you Pot Belly - that was possibly some of the yummiest food I have ever eaten.

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Part of my Wordpress→Blogger journey, this post copied 26/12/2020 in republication of my 27 July 2015 post at my experimental self-hosted Wordpress where it achieved 22 views.

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Original post received 1 comment which I will append here:
(but if any of you want me to delete yours from this republished version, please tell me)

Cecilia said:
29 July 2015 at 11:13 pm
I am looking forward to my big conference. Hope it is as well catered for as yours. Favourite librarian can you please show me how to do an excel spreadsheet without my brain collapsing?

DIY desktop icons with IrfanView #blogjune

No fuss, no bother,

IrfanView quickly converts my .jpg images to .ico ; giving me visually meaningful desktop icons.

Recently I became interested in customising my desktop icons. Specifically (so far): shortcuts to webpages which otherwise would, by default, show the browser's icon. Regular readers may recall that Mr 17 helpfully photoshopped two creative commons images into one; and that it was only after much fuss I found an online converter [no longer available (2020)] to achieve an .ico file.

... and more (later)...

Apparently IrfanView is capable of tons more than this little thing I needed.  It will come in handy:

• when I have time to learn about optimising (beyond cropping and resizing images with Paint to 500px or less before uploading)
• or for working with layers? (see if I can stretch beyond the gimp tutorials with which I made a couple of textures for SecondLife).

How simple?

For future reference, with IrfanView icons are a simple matter of:

File, Save Picture As, .ico [and Discovered 25/12/2020: Both ico options checked]

Thanks Irfan.

Will he earn a place on my toolbar?
[Update 25/12/2020 - he did :-D]

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Part of my Wordpress→Blogger journey, this post copied 25/12/2020 in republication of my 17 June 2015 post at my experimental self-hosted Wordpress

Sons are useful for... making icons

Or: Mothers and sons learn together

Can I?...

My calendar is in Google calendar. A shortcut on my desktop lets me open it in Chrome with one click.  Of course, then I decided I wanted a special calendar icon for it.  I wanted a calendar in the middle of a chrome icon. Yes a calendar icon would have been simpler but I had a notion of it needing to look similar to the shortcut I have at work.

Would you?

This is where my digital-media-trained and his Photoshop skillz comes in.

That's great but ...

Unfortunately his beautiful combinations looked fine in photoshop, but the first opened at my end with a black background, another had a white background, and when we tried to save as .ico in bmp or png formats (because Photoshop CC did not seem to be able to save to .ico) some showed no image at all.

Trial and error

Some of the clues we tried:

• Ryan at StackExchange suggested that we must first save the .png files to the computer, and then open them with Photoshop (during copy paste techniques Photoshop converts the transparency to black).
• Although my issue does not involve WordPress as did Mike Lee's 2012 issue with the black turning up when he resized images, I wondered from his problem statement whether I might eliminate resizing as a possible cause by using images that were already the desired size. That appeared to help, but we were working through ideas so quickly I am not sure if it was required, because for the one below Mr 17 did resize one of the source images.  I'd have preferred a blue calendar, but could not find one the right size licenced for reuse.

Image (pre-iconised) I use for shortcut to Calendar in Chrome

• The file format issue was the last problem, [which was solved by a webtool which has since (by 2020) been 'deprecated' - I would now use IrfanView or icoconvert.com].

Source images are from Wikipedia: (Calendar) and (Chrome).

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Part of my Wordpress→Blogger journey, this post copied 25/12/2020 in republication of my 2 June 2015 post at my experimental self-hosted Wordpress

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