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Author Topic: Feature idea: Smart preselect...  (Read 4285 times)

kunkel321

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Feature idea: Smart preselect...
« on: February 26, 2012, 01:28 PM »
While using Object capture mode, it occurred to be that one or more of the smaller sub-items that SSC was "offering" to select (the stuff inside the window) are also things that I will probably end up needing to Select so that I can apply image effects...
Why not just let SSC "remember" what these things are. Then, after the object is captured and flattened into an image, SSC can have the corresponding part of the image Pre-Selected for me...
preselect.jpg

mouser

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Re: Feature idea: Smart preselect...
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2012, 01:53 PM »
Can you elaborate a little bit?

kunkel321

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Re: Feature idea: Smart preselect...
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2012, 02:39 PM »
Actually I guess the two Boxes wouldn't be different colors because SSC wouldn't know if I was going to pre-select, or grab, the object. 
Anyhoo...  If I activate a "grab object" capture, then hover my cursor over a window (eg the above ex), different items get outlined with the Red Box (menu items, status bar, etc), as SSC is offering to grab them.  When I move the cursor to the edge of the window, the Red Box "lets go" of the inner object and Boxes the entire window.
It occurred to me that when I need to capture an Object, I likely will emphasis part of it with some SpecialFX tool AND that the thing I'll want to emphasize will likely be one of those objects that SSC was JUST A SECOND AGO offering to grab!

So my proposed idea could work like this...
Options are set to:
   Ctrl+Click in Red Box = capture object.
   Alt+Click in Red Box = remember that area of the image and have it automatically selected when the SSC main window opens.
User order of operations:
  1. Activate Object grab.
  2. When hovering over the area I will be emphasizing (or de-emphasizing), Alt+Click. 
  3. (SSC is still in Red Box object capture mode) Alt-Click other areas if there are to be multiply-selected areas.
  4. Then Ctrl+Click the larger object.
  5. When the image is initially opened in the SSC main window, the "alt+clicked" items are accurately selected.  (Note that any pre-selected area outside of the final capture would be discarded.)

I supposed this could also be achieved by adding a 5th button to the post-object-capture dialog.   Currently there is a [Save selected object and choose another] button.  You could add a [Save selected object and highlight/pre-select an area of it].

=======
Note that I would not call this a critical feature...  Obviously it's not difficult to accurately select part of an image POST-capture.  It would be clever though.  And I don't think that there are any other screen capture utilities that do this...  (I'm familiar with most of them)   :)

mouser

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Re: Feature idea: Smart preselect...
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2012, 02:42 PM »
i see now.. yes that would be a neat feature, and perhaps not too difficult to add..

x16wda

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Re: Feature idea: Smart preselect...
« Reply #4 on: March 16, 2012, 07:49 PM »
An off-topic aside here... Just happened to spy the Ted Notepad screen shot... I keep that installed for some of its useful tools, but it is so abysmally poor on very large files (which I work with daily) that I hardly use it.  That said, I have found other ways to do most of what Tednpad does: Notepad2 (www.flos-freeware.ch) which is my current favorite Scintilla-based text editor (portable, many useful tools, brilliant on large files, native 64 bit version) and Dolphin text editor menu (www.animal-software.com/dolphin-text-editor-menu.php) which spices up everywhere you can select a few lines of text.  Just thought I'd mention them; again, sorry to skip off topic :-)
vi vi vi - editor of the beast

kunkel321

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Re: Feature idea: Smart preselect...
« Reply #5 on: March 17, 2012, 10:18 AM »
Excellent!  Another that I've recently found (via nonags.com) is TextMorph  http://www.ssesetup.com/textmorph.html Has some cool customizability.