I'm making a manual for a web-based app. I take screenshots and put them into adobe illustrator and they lose their quality extremely fast when zooming in.
Is there any way I can take high resolution or vector based screenshots that don't loose image quality when zoomed in? This seems to be only a problem with Illustrator, with Photoshop when I zoom in it gets slightly fuzzy but that's it.
There's no way to capture a vector screenshot. You can, however, convert the screenshot to vector through use of tools like Image Trace (Illustrator, under the Window menu) or recreate the user interface by hand.
Alternatively, if you have access to a computer (or tablet) with a retina display, the screenshots taken on it will be around double the resolution and be able to be scaled up a lot cleaner. They will, however, still be raster graphics, so they won't scale infinitely.
The reason why it gets fuzzy and why you can't take a vector screenshot: Screenshots are always raster graphics. Illustrator is a vector graphics program. Raster graphics are pixel-based; they're comprised of many pixels that each have color information. When you scale a raster image up, you make the pixels bigger, which results in a pixelated or fuzzy look to the image.
Vector graphics are essentially math and some markup. When you create a shape in Illustrator, it makes a mathematical expression that represents that shape. When you scale the image, it just redraws it. It doesn't get pixelated because the shape is preserved in the expression, not in the color value of the pixels.
When you take a screenshot, you're literally capturing the pixels on your screen, so its a raster, or bitmapped, image and not a vector.
This is a common question that I like to try and push back on:
don't bother
A screen shot is literally that...what the user would see on screen. There is no need to make it any higher resolution or sharper than it is. It is what it is and that is what you should show the user.
In other words: It's fine. Just leave it! :)
That said, the lazy solution: If you can run the software or web site on a Retina MacBook, use that, as your screen shot will contain 4x the pixels by default.
If the issue, on the other hand, is that your images are getting fuzzy in software they are being imported into, the issue is potentially that the images are being converted to JPG and resampled. This is common when making PDFs. A workaround for that would be:
You can enlarge the content before you take a screen shot by pressing cmd + + on Mac or ctrl + + on Windows. This is easier than seeking out a retina computer at times.
Alt.
Commented
Dec 29, 2015 at 6:57
Try this: Maximise the size of the image you're taking a screenshot of; make it fill the screen as much as you can.
Use 'Snipimage' to exactly fit the image you want. (Start > All Programs > Accessories ... & I recommend pinning it to the taskbar where it's conveniently there when you want it)
Click File> Send to> Email recipient as attachment
Drag the attachment from the email which opens into a directory so you've got a copy of it.
Close the email.
Now try putting this image into powerpoint (or word, or whatever). It behaves much better than the original screenshot.
