Capturing and Copying Screenshots

To quickly capture a screenshot image of a plot, press Ctrl+C when the window or another plot window has focus. The screenshot image is then available on the clipboard so that you can paste it into, for example, a document. You can also use the button (

) on the window toolbar to capture an image snapshot of a plot and to access image settings for more control of the snapshot and to save it to a file, if desired. To do so, follow the steps below. For the image generation, you can enable hardware-accelerated image export as an alternative to software rendering; see 1D Image, 2D Image, or 3D Image for more information.

In the window or any other plot window, click the button (

) to open the dialog box.

Under , you can choose from a number of predefined image size settings from the list, where is the default. Select to define the image size manually using the settings below set up for a snapshot suitable for the web (using pixels as the default unit and 96 DPI as the default resolution) or select to define the image size manually using the settings below set up for a printout of the snapshot (using millimeters as the default unit and 300 DPI as the default resolution).

Under , select a to define the image size: , , or .

Select the check box to maintain the calculation of the width and height.

Enter the and in the units selected for the image.

Enter the for the image in DPI (dots per inch) as a value between 10 and 1200 DPI.

The software computes and displays values for and based on the inputs above so that you can check that the image size is suitable. If you select from the list, only the appears.

The check box is cleared by default. Select it to add a zoom to extents before printing.

The check box is selected by default. Click to clear if required. Antialiasingminimizes distortion such as jagged edges in the image.

Under , the , (1D graphs) or (2D plots), , (1D graphs), and check boxes (1D and 2D images) or the , , , , and check boxes (3D images) are selected by default to display the information on the screenshot if you select the check box. You can then also edit the selections for including or excluding these parts of the plot. The check box is selected by default for 1D images.

Enter a size in points (pt) as a value between 1 and 1000 pt. The default value is 9 pt. This font size overrides the system font size used in the COMSOL Desktop.

Select a : , , or . The setting is the background color in the plot window on the COMSOL Desktop. For , click the button to select a custom color from the color palette that opens. For image snapshots saved to file, the option (which is the default background) is only applicable for the PNG file format.


	Transparent image support includes two parts: Raw data of the PNG image and an external renderer (image viewer). The COMSOL Multiphysics software can provide a correct PNG image itself but cannot control the external renderer.


	When importing an image with a transparent background to another Windows application, first save the image as a file rather than saving it to the clipboard. In some cases, the transparent background is not preserved if you copy an image via the clipboard.

Under , select the target: (the default) copies the image to the clipboard. saves the image to a file.

If is selected:

Select a file : , (1D plots only), , , , (the default), or (results plots in 3D only). For the JPEG format, you can also enter a quality parameter by selecting the Quality check box and entering a quality level between 1 and 100 (default: 92). Usually, a hight quality level in the range of 90–95 is recommended.

Enter a file path in the field, or click to specify the name and location of the file.

The check box is selected by default. Clear it if you do not want a suffix to be appended.

Click to generate an image snapshot and close the dialog box.


	Printing from the COMSOL Desktop