Save As Picture function doesn't work

May 01, 2014

Pierre Grobler
By Pierre Grobler

Hi Everyone,

I was hoping there would be someone who could assist me.

A bit of background first, and not to bore you to death.... Our organisation uses ForceTen (Outstart LCMS), and we have been finding that sometimes when you upload a Storyline Zipfile onto the production site, and run it to test that some screens go completely black. Although there seems to be no logical reason for this, we have identified that in most cases there is a image that causes this to happen.

So the work around in the past was to go into Storyline, click on the image and then Save as Picture, to re-create the image file, from Storyline.  In 90% of the cases this has solved the issue.

In the last couple of weeks I have created some new learning , and of course upon loading it into ForceTen found that both courses are giving me the black Screen treatment on some slides. I then went back to Storyline, and now when I click on the image and select Save As Picture, Storyline saves a blank PNG file.

I have 2 questions,

1.  Does anyone else use ForceTen (Outstart), and if so have you come across this problem

2. Is anyone else experiencing the Save as Picture fault, and if NOT, what can I do to fix it.

Many thanks

Pierre

20 Replies
Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
almost 10 years ago05/01/14 at 9:54 am (UTC)

Hi Pierre,

I'm sorry to hear about the odd behavior you're experiencing and it does sound particularly unusual. I'd like to see if you can check into a few things to help narrow down what might be happening.

First, please confirm that you're working with local project files that adhere to the guidelines detailed here about file name and file path length. Working off a network drive/USB, or having file names with unusual characters can cause unusual behavior within Storyline. 

Are you able to determine if it's one particular image? Have you tried testing the problematic images in their own Storyline files? If they work independently of your main file, I'd try to import the entire project into a new Storyline project as detailed here. 

I don't think it sounds like an LMS issue, but it wouldn't hurt to confirm by loading one of the problematic courses into SCORM Cloud which is an industry standard for testing SCORM Content. I'd recommend testing it in a few different browsers with different Flash versions if you have them available to see if it's browser/flash specific as well. Additional information on which browsers are supported is detailed here. 

Please let us know what you're able to determine after checking into those elements. 

Pierre Grobler
almost 10 years ago05/02/14 at 2:21 am (UTC)

Hi Ashley,

I have checked and I am definitely adhering to the guidelines related to where the file is saved and the path.

My next step was to start a new project file and I inserted two few different images into the project.  This is where it gets interesting. If I leave the picture as is and then click Save As Picture, it works fine. BUT, as soon as I change the shape of the picture, using the picture shape option, it all goes wrong. Now, I have to mention that it is a Brand requirement for us that all images have rounded corners.

So it seems the moment I change the shape of the image to rounded corners, the image corrupts for some reason.  I suspect this is also what is causing the issue with the upload to our LMS platform.

I will include the following for your testing purposes:

1. The project file with the 2 images.  You will see there are 2 versions of the images, one in the original state and the other with rounded corners. Try and save both versions as a picture.

2. I attached a screen grab of the results of my Save As Picture activity.

You will notice the files Picture2 and Picture3, where the save attempts for the images with rounded corners.  Picture2a and Picture3a were the save as Picture results for the original images in the project.

I look forward to hear your views and hopefully solution

Pierre

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
almost 10 years ago05/02/14 at 8:51 am (UTC)

Hi Pierre,

Thanks for sending along the file. I took a look at it, and followed your steps for the first image, and saved as picture and then changed the shape to see how it would behave - they all looked fine within the .story file so I published and placed within SCORM Cloud. The images continued to display as I saw them within the .story file. Can you view the version I posted here and let me know how it behaves for you? 

Christine Hendrickson
almost 10 years ago05/09/14 at 12:09 pm (UTC)

Hi Pierre,

I apologize for the delay. Ashley is out of the office this week for vacation. 

Can you tell me if the image files originated as .PNG files, or another format? Also, did you insert the images through the menu, or were they pasted into the slides? 

If I import an image and change the shape, I see the same thing. Also, when re-importing that image, I see a blank object. I tried saving the image along with another object, but only the object appears in the image that's saved. 

I agree that it sounds like an issue that occurs after the shape of the image is saved, but now I'm curious if this relates to all shapes - or just the "rounded" edge shape as well as the "Round Diagonal Corner".

This seems to happen with JPG images as well as PNG images. 

Can you let me know if you've tried any other formats or shapes? 

Thanks!

Joseph Flanagan
almost 10 years ago05/19/14 at 4:49 am (UTC)

HI,

Yeah, this does seem to be a bug with storyline. Doesn't matter the shape or how the picture gets into storyline. I can save as a picture if I don't alter the picture, but as soon as I try to change the shape, it saves a blank image. I had similar problems with trying to save grouped images as a picture: I had to ungroup the objects first. 

I know you tried Photoshop, but have you tried PowerPoint? I imported an image into Powerpoint 2010, selected one of the default Picture Styles with rounded corners, saved it as a picture, imported it into Storyline, and then was able to save it as a picture within Storyline without any problems. I'm surprised that it works for PowerPoint but not for Photoshop. (I haven't tried myself to do it in Photoshop, and it's odd that it doesn't work). The options on Picture Styles is a bit limited, however, so it might not be what you want. 

I would suggest you submit a case The forums are not really meant for official support but for fellow users of Articulate products (like me). 

Joe 

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard
almost 10 years ago05/20/14 at 9:55 am (UTC)

Hi Pierre,

Sorry for the delay and my initial confusion - when you said Explorer, I thought you were saying you couldn't see them in Internet Explorer when published, not Windows explorer. It does seem particularly odd, so I'm going to share the information with our QA team for further review. Since the images are still visible within Storyline, I'd suggest to leave them as is while in Storyline and if you need to use them elsewhere and reinsert to follow the workaround of changing the shape in Powerpoint. 

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