Text quality when adding questions hints
Apr 11, 2011
I started with Dave Moxon's excellent suggestion to use the Zoom tool to provide hints inside quiz questions. (Adding question hints in Quizmaker '09)
Getting this to work is easy, but I have been struggling to achieve a good text quality.
The simplest approach is to create a text box in PPT, and then use Save as Picture to save this as a .jpg graphic. However, PPT has a mind of its own, and applies a certain amount of compression, resulting in poor quality. You can see the compression artifacts as fuzzy surroundings here: (All the following pictures are screen clips from QM preview mode)
I then moved to a heavy-weight graphics program, Corel Photo-Paint, and after a bit of fiddling I achieved a fairly good graphic as follows: (Looks bolder than the PPT, but this is a better rendering of the actual font)
So far, so good! I then applied Zoom Picture as described by Dave... But look at the degradation in quality in the result:
This fuzziness is not in the original graphic, and does not show when Zoom Picture is not used. So is the Zoom function at fault?
A little more experimenting showed that the problem appears to be the border: I used QM's Format tool to apply a 1 pixel border as you can see above, to make the hint overlay distinct from the slide content. But this appears to be the problem: Remove the border, and the quality reverts back to match the un-Zoomed image as follows:
However, I lost the neat border.
So, questions:
(1) Can anyone suggest a quicker way to produce a fairly large number of text-to-graphic objects?
(2) How can I include a border without triggering the above problem?
BTW: Zoom Picture does not work on a QM-inserted Shape or Text Box.
5 Replies
Do I need Presenter to achieve the hint effect? I have the QM 09 stand alone, no presenter, but I do have powerpoint.
Not sure if I can answer your question - but I didn't know about the method you are using to build in click-able hints in quizmaker. Can't wait to use this in one of my courses!
Have you seen this blog post on screenshots that has a lot of tips and hits that have to to with scaling and resizing? There are lots ot tips on how to get crisp and clear screenshots. http://www.articulate.com/blog/how-to-get-perfect-screenshots-in-presenter-09/
Also, what tools to you have for taking screenshots of text boxes? I only have PPT2010's screen clipping tool or Snagit. I could give you some tips for these tools, or others might be able to give you some hints if they know what tools you have to use.
I have SnagIt to capture images.
Hi
I did solve this problem a long time back, but I'm not sure why I didn't post the info...
I discovered that all the problems relate to trying to use a .jpg image, as all the Articulate programs keep trying to apply compression in various ways. The trick is to save the tip as a .png file - QM then does not mess around with it, and it will display exactly as you created it!
I first created a few different "cloud" shapes, to allow me some variety. In PPT I selected one of the cloud shapes, typed in the required hint text in the font I desired, and then used right-click / Save as picture to save it in a folder as a .png file. Swapping across to QM I then inserted this image and set it up as described by Dave Moxon - See ref. above.
(Incidentally, I did this for a set of quizzes with a total of about 300 questions - Rather a tedious job. Then we decided to scrap the use of hints completely, for other reasons associated with the structure of the quizzes... In the end what counts is building a solution which works well for the student / learner, and not how many fancy bells and whistles you can dream up!)
Thanks for sharing, Peter!
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