Screenshot Guidelines & Instructions

Simutronics currently allows users to submit a screenshot of their web site when submitting their link for display on our links pages. Ideally, a screenshot should be an image of page that the web site URL points to, or no more than one link below that. We also prefer that browser menus be trimmed out of the image.

How to Make a Screenshot
1. Open up your website in a browser. Maximize the window for best effect.

2. Capture an image of your screen.

Windows Users: Find and press the Print Screen key on your keyboard. It is sometimes labeled PrtScrn. Doing this copies an image of the screen into the Windows clipboard. Alternatively, you may use a screen capture program (see suggested software below).

Macintosh Users: (OS8) Press Clover-Shift-3. This will capture an image of the screen and save it to your hard drive. Look for a file named Picture 1 (the number may change if you already have images saved in this manner).

3. Open up an image editing program (see suggested software editors).

4. Paste the image into the editor. This is most often done by using the Paste option on the Edit menu, but can vary from editor to editor. Alternatively, you may need to open the image file if your capture method saved the image to disk.

5. Trim out excess browser menus and other elements.

Good	Not so good

6. Resize the image to be 140 pixels wide by 102 pixels tall. Again, the method varies from editor to editor. If possible, choose to maintain proportions and get the image as close to 140 by 102 as possible, then trim or crop out the excess. Be certain to choose the best resize filter option available. Try several and choose the best looking result.

Care must be taken when resizing. Since the screenshot is representative of your entire site, try using different programs to create your image and choose the best result.
Good filter creates a smooth image and text that is much more clear	Bad filter creates an unattractive image while text becomes a pixelated mess

7. Save the image in JPG, GIF or PNG format. We prefer JPG but accept any of the three.

8. When saved, check the size of the file. It should be about 15k or less. If not, try adjusting the compression settings. Usually about 10 percent compression is enough with the JPG format.

9. You're done!

You may now upload the image to your web server and make note of the URL necessary to view the image. When you include the URL to the image in your link submission, we will download the image to our servers when your site is approved.

Note: Some programs create an HTML page that has your image inserted within. When you provide a URL to your screenshot, make sure you are providing a URL that points DIRECTLY to the image and not to an HTML page.

Example: http://www.play.net/images/screenshottest.jpg

Suggested Software

Windows Image Editors
IrfanView	Freeware image viewer and editor.
Paint Shop Pro	An excellent low cost full featured image editor.
Arles Image Web Page Creator	A handy util for creating thumbnails at high quality.

Macintosh Editors
GraphicConverter (PowerPC)	An all-purpose shareware image editor.
Adobe Photoshop	Popular professional image editor.

For more image editing and screen capture options, search Download.com.