Taking screengrabs in native low-res?

Hi, from what I could gather it's possible to get such screenshots with an emulator on the Mac OS X platform, but does anyone know if one exists for windows that let's me take screenshots in 320x200 (GS) or 280x192 (8bit) ? Neither the Kegs versions nor the Apple II emulators I tried seem to support that.

Hiya Blaming Halo!

I've used KEGS on Mac OS X to take some screenshots of things that will be appearing in the coffee table book, but to do that I took a screen grab of the entire screen and cropped it in Photoshop, including only the 640 x 400 graphics mode displayed by KEGS.

If the image is actually a super hi-res image with a resolution of 320 x 200, I convert the image to an indexed colour image (8-bit) and then scale the image down to 50% of its original size. By converting to indexed colour first, you ensure that Photoshop doesn't add any unnecessary anti-aliasing, and the image stays true to its pixels.

If the image is 640 x 200, I simply keep the 640 x 400 graphic after cropping.

I haven't found any evidence in KEGS' documentation that supports outputting screen grabs, but it may in fact be there somewhere.

- Alex

Thanks for your reply Alex. I've used M.E.S.S. so far, for Apple II screenshots that puts out a 560 x192 screen (even at low resolution). I've sort of reversed the pixeldoubling with Photoshop. M.E.S.S. also emulates the GS, but with border. I've thought about cropping myself, but I'm not sure how to do that precisely without too much effort and not manually. (I plan to upload the shots on a site, which needs them pixel-perfect so to speak, ). I mostly use an old photoshop version (5.5) which apparently doesn't even feature makros.

MESS! That's an emulator I haven't heard about for a while. I thought it was too ambitious a project, to emulate every personal computer under the one program. I'll have to check it out and see how far it's progressed.

Photoshop 5.5 includes 'Actions' (rather than 'macros') unless you're using Photoshop Elements. You can set an action to record, then simply go through the process of cropping an image and that process will be recorded.

Otherwise, feel free to submit screen grabs with borders and I'll crop them.

Just make sure you save them as GIFs or 8-bit PNGs! JPGs are a IIGS graphics worst enemy!

- Alex

Thanks for the offer Alex, but I think I finally have all the tools needed for cropping and and taking images. The newer versions of applewin also allows to take screenshots, so that saves me some effort as well.

As for MESS, it's nice for some less emulated systems, like the Coco etc., what annoys me are the constant changes to interface and such. You have to download a package for scanlines now for example, in the previous versions that was a function within the programm. Apparently you also have to always keep an eye on it in case some regression happens (at least that was my experience with the PC systems).