Large Resolution Screenshot Dilemma!

Any thoughts?

Need help here

Having a higher resolution screen shot than the actual screen size isn't going to make the image quality any better. The screen only has so many pixel to display so an image with more actual pixels can't actually be displayed without dropping pixels. You should also check your Publish quality setting to make sure you aren't compressing it too much might help. You get set it for higher quality images at the expense of file size.

There is a case where having a higher resolution image is useful and that is when you use a zoom region on an image. If you have a screen size of 600x800 with a full screen image of 600x800 and then you try to zoom it it will become pixelated because you are now attempting to fill a 600x800 pixel screen with only part of 600x800 image. To get around this pixelation you can place a higher resolution image off-stage (say a 1200x1600 version of the image). Copy that larger image and paste it on stage, then scale it down to fit then screen (600x800). Now when you zoom the onscreen image it will use the data from the offscreen image to draw the zoom area and be nice and sharp. Kind of an odd thing and not something you'd likely discover on your own but it works really well.

I recently did a project that was handed to me with images set at a similar  I reduced the project down and explained to the client that a lot of users would not have screens that size and also that certain parts of the player do not scale well, if you fix the size of the player on smaller sv=creens you will get scroll panels and don't forget the player adds at least 10 pixels.

Brett share a good example of using zoom, although I understand from the developers this should have now been fixed, although if I have to zoom I still do this.

Hi Phil,

Zooming is a good option. But sometimes frequently zooming in different areas on a same picture might resulting in losing the big picture for the learners, which can be true when teaching learners on how to use a software. 

That is why I try to use high quality, large images in my course so that learners do not have to follow the zooming different areas on the same slide.

I dug into the issue myself and have some interesting findings.

Storyline has two options scaling its player: 

1. Scale player to fill browser window 
2. Lock player at optimal size

Option 1 scales the player to fill browser window to whatever the browser's size is. This option sacrifices image quality because of the scaling.

Option 2 does not scale the player but scales browser window. This option displays image at its original dimension so image has the best quality. But because of the browser window scaling, SL has to add a scroll panel in order to see all content.

As you can see, if you want best image quality, you have to add a scroll panel, which is really bothering. If you want to get rid of the scroll panel, you have to sacrifice image quality. It is an either-or situation. 

Hope Storyline can offer more player options in the next release.

Hi Cheng,

Thanks for sharing the update here and if you'd like to see new elements in future updates or versions, please share your thoughts with our development team. You may wan to reference this scenario, as offering a lot of detail about what you'd like to see and why will help our team determine how/if to include it in a new update.