Help Builder allows you to access images in three separate ways:

• Linking to an image on disk
  
• Capturing an image from the screen using the built in capture utility
  
• Capturing an image from the screen using TechSmith's SnagIt
  

Linking to an image

Linking to an existing image is easily done by using the image icon (Ctrl-P) on the toolbar.

I previously created a logo image for my Web Monitor project and I copied this image into my Web Monitor Help project's Images directory. I now want to display this image in my root index topic. I modified this topic to look a little nicer than the generated default page:

<<h3>>Welcome to West Wind Web Monitor<</h3>>
Need to keep an eye on your Web site? Worried that the site might not be up
and running returning accurate results? Or do you need to have
...

To insert the image just after the Welcome header I place the cursor there and press Ctrl-P or click on the Image Icon on the toolbar. This brings up a file selection dialog where I can choose an image. Remember you'll want to choose images from within your project images if the image is to be compiled into the final help file. This process inserts a link into my topic:

<<h3>>Welcome to West Wind Web Monitor<</h3>>
<<img src="images\WebMonitor_sm.gif">> Need to keep an eye on your Web site? Worried that the site might not be up and running returning accurate results?
...

If you preview this you'll see the image but the image is in block mode - the text does not flow around it. This is the default behavior and it works well for things like screen shots, diagrams or other large image types. In this case though I want the text to flow around my logo. So I'll change the image tag with one final manual adjustment using plain HTML image attributes:

<<img src="images\WebMonitor_sm.gif" align='left' hspace=5>>

And voila your image now looks like this:

A Note about Image Paths
Notice that the image path is truncated as a relative path to the current project (images/someimage.gif) which causes this image to be embedded into the help file. Preferrably this image should be stored in the Images directory of the project or below it. Only images that are part of the project directory hierarchy here can be compiled into the Help CHM file - any external images are linked with a full external URL.

Capturing an Image from the Screen

Help Builder also allows you to directly capture images from the screen. It supports two modes - if you have TechSmith's SnagIt installed it will use SnagIt to capture images directly. Otherwise it will use a more simplistic Ctrl/Alt-PrtScrn based capture mechanism to capture windows and the entire screen.

When you first access the Screen Capture utility and no image is residing on the clipboard you'll see a window like this:

The utility relies on the standard Windows capability of being able to capture the active window with Ctrl-PrtScn or the entire screen with Alt-PrtScn. The screen capture utility can pick up these captured images and allows you to save them locally.

The Screen Capture utility is accessible in two ways:

• From the Topic Editing Toolbar
  The captured image can be saved and when it is and an edit control is active and still at the same position as previously the image is directly inserted as an image link. If you have moved the cursor or there's no active edit control, the image is saved only.

• From the Tools Menu
  The image is loaded and can simply be saved. No link insertion is performed.
  

The base capture window that informs you of the PrtScn key functions which copy captured images onto the clipboard. The idea is to capture the image of your choice with Alt-PrtScrn, then return to this window and click on the Paste Image button to load the image. Once you do this you will see the image displayed in the viewer along with some basic information about the captured image file.

Note that you can paste an image from the clipboard regardless of where it came from - if you chose you can use another image capture program or image editor such as Paint Shop Pro which has an excellent Screen Capture Utility. We just provide the basics here for quick and dirty image capture.

Once the image is in the editor you can resize it, and the proceed to save it. We recommend you save images in PNG format as this is the most compressed format that also provides the best image quality for screen shots. You can experiment with image sizes by saving to different formats by viewing the filename info in the dialog after you've saved the image.

Capturing Images with SnagIt

If you have SnagIt from Techsmith installed, Help Builder will allow you to use it to capture images using its Active Window Capture mode. SnagIt use must be enabled in the Options | Help Builder Settings using the Use SnagIt for screen captures if available checkbox.

To capture a window with SnagIt select the window or the content within a window (SnagIt will also capture Window content within an application Window) to make sure this window is fully visible. Go back to Help Builder and click on the Screen Capture icon.

Help Builder minimizes out of the way when the capture starts. However, SnagIt requires that the Window or content your capturing is otherwise fully visible - once in capture mode the desktop cannot be re-arranged, therefore it's important that you make sure that the window your working with is on top or otherwise fully visible on the desktop.

Once you've captured the image, Help Builder will automatically pop up again and insert an image link to the captured image into your currently active edit field. If you want to just capture an image without inserting the image into your text you can use the Tools | Capture Window/Screen option.

See also

Step By Step Guide