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About Pictures

You can insert a picture or screen capture into a topic to help explain something. Flare supports the following types of raster and vector image files: BMP, EMF, EXPS, GIF, HDP, JPG, JPEG, PNG, SWF, TIF, TIFF, WDP, WMF, XAML, XPS.

You can accomplish the following with pictures:

Picture (insert) These steps show you how to insert an image file that already exists. See Inserting Pictures into Topics.
Screen capture (insert) Follow these steps if you have MadCap Capture installed on your computer and you want to capture an image from your screen and insert it into a topic at the same time. See Inserting Screen Capture Images into Topics.
Single-source image (create) If you are creating a project containing pictures and need to generate output for both online and printed output, chances are good that you require different image settings (e.g., file format, color depth, resolution) for those outputs. In the past, the easiest way to accomplish this task was to create one set of images for the online output and another set for the printed output. However, there is another alternative. If you have both MadCap Flare and MadCap Capture installed, you can single-source your images, producing only one set of images for all outputs. You can specify that the online images should have one group of settings, while the printed images have another group of settings. See Creating Single-Source Images.

You can also single-source images when resizing them. This can be done through the use of styles (applying the settings to many images at once) or local formatting (applying the settings to one image). When you generate online output, the image will be displayed in one size, and when you generate print-based output, the image will be displayed in another size. See Resizing Pictures.
Background (add) You can add background settings to an image. This includes the ability to specify a color, another image, and a repeating pattern for the background image. See Adding Backgrounds to Pictures.
Borders (add) You can add borders around an image, specifying the border size, color, and type. See Adding Borders to Pictures.
Hyperlink (insert) After you insert a picture into a topic, you can turn that picture into a hyperlink, connecting it to another topic, an external file (such as a website), or an email. See Inserting Image Hyperlinks into Topics.
Image file (add) These steps show you how to add a picture to your project, without inserting it into a topic. See Adding Pictures to Projects.
Image file (delete) These steps show you how to remove an image file from a project. See Deleting Image Files from the Project.
Image frame (add) You can draw an image frame in a page layout. The picture you select is added to a frame of the same size, which you can place on the page as necessary. This allows you to place an image automatically on multiple pages in the output. You might use this feature, for example, if you want to place your company logo somewhere on each page. See Adding Pictures to Page Layout Frames.
List of pictures (create) You can use the list-of proxy to generate a list of various types of elements (e.g., tables, images) in your output, with links to the corresponding content. See Creating a List of Pictures.
MadCap Capture (launch) If you have MadCap Capture installed on your computer, you can launch it from within Flare. You can then use Capture to edit any pictures in your project. See Launching MadCap Capture.
Margins (add) You can adjust the margins around an image so that there is extra space above, below, to the right, or to the left of it. See Adding Margins to Pictures.
Padding (add) You can add padding (i.e., extra space) between an image's border and the image itself. See Adding Padding to Pictures.
Picture (delete) These steps show you how to delete a picture that you have previously inserted into a topic. See Deleting Pictures from Topics.
Picture (edit) If you have MadCap Capture installed on your computer, you can open any image in your project. The image opens in Capture, where you can make changes to it. See Editing Pictures.
Picture (move) After you insert a picture or screen capture image into a topic, you can easily move that picture around. See Moving Pictures in Topics.
Picture (open) You can open a picture that you have added to your project. When you open the picture, it displays in the Image Viewer within Flare. See Opening Pictures.
Picture (position) You can use object positioning to precisely place an inserted picture anywhere you need it on a page. This includes the ability to wrap text around an image or float a picture outside the frame holding the regular flow of text. See About Object Positioning.
Picture (resize) You can resize images with various methods. See Resizing Pictures.

Note: When you insert a picture from outside your project into a topic, a copy of the image file is added to your project. The image file is stored in the Resources\Images folder of the Content Explorer, unless you specify another location.

Note: If you import Microsoft Word documents containing embedded pictures into a project, Flare places copies of those image files in subfolders within the Resources\Images folder. This is done in order to avoid naming conflicts with embedded images from other Word documents that you might import. The subfolders are named after the Word documents being imported.

Note: If you apply certain special effects or artwork (e.g., arrows) to images in Word and then import them into Flare, those effects will not be retained. For example, a rotated image will return to its straight, original state. However, there are some workarounds that may allow you to keep the effects or artwork. One solution is to apply another effect such as a shadow or 3-D to the image in Word (e.g., add a shadow to a rotated image that you want to keep). This forces Word to save the image as an entirely new image with the effects. Another possible solution is to save the Word document as a Web Page, manually copy that HTM file into the Flare folder, and then open it within Flare. As for text floating around images, this effect is not supported in Flare. When you import from Word, the text is added below the image.

Note: If you have used non–web-safe image formats (e.g., WMF, EMF, BMP, TIF, TIFF, XPS, EXPS) in your project and want those images to be converted to web-safe formats (e.g., GIF, JPEG, PNG) when you generate online output (e.g., DotNet Help, HTML Help, WebHelp, WebHelp Plus, WebHelp AIR), you can use an option on the Advanced tab of the Target Editor. For print-based output types (Adobe PDF, XHTML, Microsoft XPS, Microsoft Word, Adobe FrameMaker), the original image file formats will be used when you generate output.