Tips for Using Paint

[mmm4444bot]

As time becomes available, I will post information in this thread about various ways that I use older versions of Micro$oft Paint and its features to create diagrams. (I'm not familiar with the versions of Paint bundled with Vista or Win7, so you might experience some differences in those versions. I used WinXP, for this thread.)

People sometimes try copy-and-paste with files or images from the Internet, only to find that it does not work. Security provisions are often to blame for this. Here is how I circumvent this roadblock.

All versions of Micro$oft Windows come with the ability to copy an image of practically anything that you see displayed on your monitor (video frames are one exception). Simply hold down the CTRL key while pressing the PRTSCR key (print screen). This keyboard combination sends a bitmap image of your screen to the clipboard, called a "screenshot".

You may then paste the contents of the clipboard into any Paint document (new or existing) and edit the resulting file at will.

Here's tip #1. In the earlier versions of Paint, we have the following issue. If the area of your blank document in Paint is smaller than the area of the image on the clipboard, Paint will nicely enlarge the dimensions of your blank document to match the dimensions of the image you want to paste. This is a nice feature because you don't need to know any dimensions.

It does not work the other way around. If the area of your blank document in Paint is larger than the area of the image on the clipboard, Paint will simply paste the clipboard image into the upper-left corner of your blank document. You will then need to crop the unused region, to resize your image manually.

I find that the default size of new documents in Paint is too large to make use of the autosizing feature. In other words, most of the time I am pasting smaller images from the clipboard. Therefore, I like to set the dimensions for new Paint documents to 16 by 16 pixels. This way, Paint will automatically enlarge the blank document to accomodate whatever I paste into it, saving me the time of manually resizing results from paste.

Here is how to reduce the default dimensions of your blank documents in Paint. On the menu bar, click Image and select Attributes…. You should now see a dialog box for changing the dimensions (shown below).

Note that the units are set to pixels and that my new, blank document size is just a small white area. (I don't expect anybody to be creating diagrams smaller than this.) All new documents in Paint will now be 16 by 16 pixels. You can always change the attributes back, if you desire.

[attachment=0:2e3j5ft8]scn2.JPG[/attachment:2e3j5ft8]



Here's tip #2. Use whatever zooming capabilities you have to get the desired element on your monitor to be the size that you want BEFORE you hit CTRL+PRTSCR. This is so much easier than trying to enlarge or reduce the pasted image from inside Paint.

I will use as an example one of the images that I created for this thread, shown here. (Click image to expand, if needed.)

[attachment=2:2e3j5ft8]triangles.JPG[/attachment:2e3j5ft8]

STEP 1: Capture the screenshot

In this example, the original figure is located inside a PDF file posted by another user, and I wanted to alter this figure. So, I used the zooming controls within Adobe Acrobat's PDF Reader to get the desired figure elements on that referenced page to display on my monitor at the size that I wanted to post. The zoom controls are circled in yellow below (click image to expand, if needed).

[attachment=1:2e3j5ft8]scn1.jpg[/attachment:2e3j5ft8]



MY EDITS: Shown in purple

 

[mmm4444bot]

STEP 2: Hit CTRL+PRTSCR

This copies a bitmap image of your monitor's display to the clipboard.


STEP 3: Paste the contents of the clipboard

Open a new, blank Paint document. Hit CTRL+V to paste the image from the clipboard into your new Paint document.

You should now see something like the following. (Again, click image below to expand, if needed.)

[attachment=2:3qbchfyv]scn3.JPG[/attachment:3qbchfyv]

Clearly, to obtain my finished result shown in the first post, I needed to eliminate everything from the pasted image shown above except those elements of the figure that I wanted to play with. The easiest way to do this is to draw a box around what I want to keep and cut it out. I then open a new blank document and paste the cut region into it.

Of course, we draw a box by clicking-and-dragging with the mouse. Make sure that the "select" feature is chosen first, by clicking it (shown below inside the yellow circle).

Note that the outlined selection-box that I drew below includes all of the elements in my final diagram.

[attachment=1:3qbchfyv]scn4.jpg[/attachment:3qbchfyv]

STEP 4: Send your selection to the clipboard

After you've used the mouse to draw the outlined box around your selection, hit CTRL+X to cut this selected region. This will send a bitmap image of the outlined region to the clipboard.

Once you've cut out the stuff you want, what remains in the Paint document is garbage.

STEP 5: Start a new document

Hit CTRL+N to request a new (blank) document. Windows will ask you whether or not you want to save the garbage. Say "no". You should then have a new 16-by-16-pixel blank image.

STEP 6: Paste your selected stuff from the clipboard

Hit CTRL+V to paste the bitmap image from the clipboard into your new Paint document. The 16-pixel square will automatically expand to accomodate your selected region. You should now see something like the following.

[attachment=0:3qbchfyv]scn5.jpg[/attachment:3qbchfyv]

Step 7: Name your file!

At this point, even though you have not yet begun to edit your diagram, secure what you've done thus far; that is, save this image to your hard drive by naming and saving the Paint document. DO NOT WAIT to save your efforts thus far.

Now you are ready to begin using some features in Paint to alter and tweak your diagram to its desired end.

I will discuss the features that I used in this example, in my next post (when time becomes available).

As always, I welcome specific questions regarding what I've posted, thus far. If anybody has any tips to share, those are welcome, too.

Cheers ~ Mark

 

[galactus]

Your aces mmm, thanks for that. Duh, I always forget about print screen for some daft reason.