Capturing and Copying Screenshots
To quickly capture a screenshot image of a plot, click the Quick Snapshot button () in the Graphics window toolbar, or press Ctrl+L. From the Quick Snapshot button you can choose any of the available preset image snapshot settings. The screenshot image is then available for the output specified for the chosen preset (the clipboard, a file, or PowerPoint) so that you can paste it or add it to, for example, a document or a presentation. You can also use the Image Snapshot button () in the Graphics window toolbar to capture an image snapshot of a plot and to access image settings for more control of the snapshot. 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 Image for more information.
1
In the Graphics window or any other plot window, click the Image Snapshot button () to open the Image Snapshot dialog box.
2
From the Preset list, you can choose from predefined and user-defined sets of image snapshot settings: Current, Manual (web), Manual (print) (the default), or Presentation and document, which are tailored settings for image snapshots suitable for a web page, for printing, or for a PowerPoint presentation or Word document, respectively. Manual (web) and Manual (print) both use a white background. Presentation and document uses a transparent background. The Current option uses the current size on the screen (which is displayed), so only the Zoom extents and Antialiasing check boxes are available under Image. If you have modified the image snapshot, you can save those settings as another preset option. To do so, click the Save as Preset button () and provide a name for the user-defined preset option in the Name field of the Save as Preset dialog box that opens. If you do not want to keep an added user-defined preset option, click the Remove Preset button (). If you have made changes to a preset option and want to return to its default values, click the Reset Preset to Default button at the bottom of the Image Snapshot dialog box.
3
Under Image, you can choose from a number of predefined image size settings from the Size list, where Current is the default. Select Manual (web) 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 Manual (print) 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).
4
Under Image, select a Unit to define the image size: Millimeters (mm), Inches (in), or Pixels (px).
5
Select the Lock aspect ratio check box to maintain the calculation of the width and height.
6
Enter the Width and Height in the units selected for the image.
7
Enter the Resolution for the image in DPI (dots per inch) as a value between 10 and 1200 DPI.
The software computes and displays values for Image size and Size on screen based on the inputs above so that you can check that the image size is suitable. If you select Current from the Size list, only the Size on screen appears.
8
The Zoom extents check box is cleared by default. Select it to add a zoom to extents before printing.
9
The Antialiasing check box is selected by default. Click to clear if required. Antialiasing minimizes distortion such as jagged edges in the image.
10
Under Layout, the Title, Legend (1D graphs) or Color legend (2D plots), Axes, Grid (1D graphs), and Logo check boxes (1D and 2D images) or the Title, Color legend, Grid, Axis orientation, and Logo check boxes (3D images) are selected by default to display the information on the screenshot if you select the Include check box. You can then also edit the selections for including or excluding these parts of the plot. The Include check box is selected by default for 1D images.
For the glTF file format (3D result plots only), the Include line segments check box is selected by default. Clear that check box to exclude line segments, which can be useful for glTF viewers that do not support line segments.
11
Enter a Font 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.
12
If desired, specify the Color theme to use for the printed image. The default is to use the Global theme, but you can also use the Default from preferences (Default), Basic, COMSOL, Dark, DarkSelection, Default, Light, LightSelection, and RYB.
13
Select a Background: Current, From theme, Color, or Transparent. The Current setting is the background color in the plot window on the COMSOL Desktop. The From theme uses the background color from the current color theme. For Color, click the Color button to select a custom color from the color palette that opens. For image snapshots saved to file, the Transparent option (which is the default background) is only applicable for the PNG file format.
14
Under Output, select the target: Clipboard (the default) to copy the image to the clipboard, File to save the image to a file, or PowerPoint and Word to use the image in Microsoft® PowerPoint and Microsoft® Word. The PowerPoint and Word target is only applicable to, for example, a geometry, mesh, or plot because the output is an image of the selected feature rather than the image in the Graphics window.
Choose the PowerPoint and Word target to use the image in a Microsoft® PowerPoint presentation or a Microsoft® Word document. The image will be copied to the clipboard in a way that it will remain linked to the model for future updates after pasting it into the presentation. See Creating PowerPoint Presentations and Word Documents with Linked Tables and Images for more information on how to insert and update images in a presentation.
15
If File is selected:
a
Select a file Format: BMP, EPS (1D plots only), JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG (the default), or glTF (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 high quality level in the range of 90–95 is recommended.
b
Enter a file path in the Filename field, or click Browse to specify the name and location of the file.
c
Select the Create unique filename by adding incremental number check box (cleared by default) to make the filenames unique by appending a numerical suffix.
16
If PowerPoint and Word is selected:
a
Select the Lock view check box if you want to lock the view in PowerPoint. Saved camera settings are then used when you update the image from PowerPoint. If this check box is cleared, the current camera settings are used when updating the image.
17
Click OK to generate an image snapshot and close the Image Snapshot dialog box.