Why does Jasc PSP 9 show PNG files in Metric ?

[see3]

I use a non-PSP screencap program to grab pics and save them in the PNG format. But when I open them in PSP the Image Dimensions are in metric (milimeters, ppcm) instead of US Standard (inches, ppi).

I haven't been able to find a solution in PSP's General Program or File Format Preferences.

Or maybe there's another setting elsewhere that I haven't found?

Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

[LindaSue]

This has been the case going at least as far back as PSP7. About the only thing you can do is change to inches in the resize dialog box so that you can see what the size is. Re-saving in inches won't help though. They'll revert right back to centimeters. Every now and then I find a PNG file online that's not in metric but I have no idea what they've done to make it show as inches in PSP.

[see3]

Re-saving in inches won't help though. They'll revert right back to centimeters.

Hi LindaSue...

Please see the next post.

-see3

[see3]

Every now and then I find a PNG file online that's not in metric but I have no idea what they've done to make it show as inches in PSP.

Hi again, LindaSue... I think I've found the answer to both of our questions... switch Screencap Programs.

I just tried some freeware called PicPick. It saves in US Standard (inches, ppi) using the PNG format!

And, of course, these PicPick screencaps open in inches... in PSP.

[LindaSue]

What does it have to do with screen captures? The PNG files that I'm talking about aren't from screen captures.

[LeviFiction]

Then see3 only solved it for themselves.

So really quick. The PNG file format defaults to meters. There is a single byte inside the physical pixel dimensions chunk that defines how the editor should read the resolution. Because it is only a single byte it can only have two values 0:unknown 1:meters. The default, again, is meters. If this is not set then I suspect that PSP will default to Inches using the necessary conversion. The encoder that PSP uses doesn't offer to let you change this so it auto-defaults to meters.

The reason you might find a PNG that shows in inches is because this single value in the file is set to 0. And if the screen capture program see3 uses defaults this to 1 they will show in centimeters. It's that simple.

[see3]

What does it have to do with screen captures? The PNG files that I'm talking about aren't from screen captures.

My mistake... I thought the original topic was about non-PSP screencaps. I thought this was a pretty friendly site... until now. bye all...

see3

[hartpaul]

Since the idea was to get screen caps into PSP, why go through another screencap program, sabve to png and then load in PSP, when you can use a perfectly good screen capture program built into PSP.

[see3]

Since the idea was to get screen caps into PSP, why go through another screencap program, sabve to png and then load in PSP, when you can use a perfectly good screen capture program built into PSP.

Unfortunately, hartpaul, PSP9 Screen Capture was/is not perfectly good. Not for me anyway.

I was looking for a way to:

1. Screen-Capture without having to launch PSP and keep it running.
2. Grab PNG's that were in ppi.

PicPick http://www.picpick.org/en/ does both. The initial capture is in ppi. And the PicPick Captures are automatically named and saved to the pictures file I've chosen.

Using PSP's screen-cap... the images were just shown as Image 1*, Image 2*, etc. and had to be renamed and saved before I could close PSP.

------------------

I grab stuff all the time, that I don't plan on keeping or editing, like Site-to-Store orders or web-based emails. I keep these in case there's a dispute about an online order I placed or something I (supposedly) said in an email. Not all reply emails include 'what you sent'.

[hartpaul]

I grab stuff all the time, that I don't plan on keeping or editing

Ahh light dawns. Records of screen. When I want to do that sort of thing -save a copy of an order, save a bit of text , save a page, I do a quick control alternate Print Screen and deop the image in Irfanview and save as a jpg, Or I do a Print and save it as a pdf file . Never thought of saving it as a png file, could not see a reason to do so.

[see3]

Never thought of saving it as a png file, could not see a reason to do so.

PicPick is sort of my Universal Grabber. I could use jpg, bmp or gif but I just leave it as png... for everything. Orders, text, page, images, etc.
One key stroke and it's instantly named, saved, done. No artifacts on anything.

..............

Don't know what version of PSP you use, but PSP9 didn't come with a Protractor or Pixel Ruler, PicPick has these as well.
Really handy when editing an image or pic in PSP. I just click the tray icon, choose what I want, and there it is... on screen... ready to go. : )

[charles1023]

In my opinion, an image processing control may solve your problem through which you can conduct various processing on your PNG image (including changing the image format). Also, you can save your image to other document or image format and use an image converter to convert other image formats to PNG format.