The ScreenPad

One additional item that bears mentioning in this chapter is the Camtasia Recorder ScreenPad. The ScreenPad is a mini-application within Recorder, a separate window that lets you drag graphical elements such as callouts, arrows, and boxes onto your screen for recording (or just looking cool). The elements float above the other content on your screen, and can be used for adding stylistic notes, captions, and other graphical objects to your captures.

Caution 

Because there’s a lot of content to this section, I’ll do you a favor and say it up-front: A good 95% of the ScreenPad’s functionality has been replaced by Camtasia Studio’s Callouts feature. Don’t get me wrong: The ScreenPad is still a great tool, but its utility is fading against the more advanced backdrop of the clickable hot spots, drop shadows, and fade effects offered by Camtasia Studio. I strongly encourage you to use callouts instead, and am really only including this section on the ScreenPad for the sake of completeness.

To open up the ScreenPad, simply choose View > ScreenPad. The ScreenPad appears in a small window, and its content is based on a “library” metaphor. There are three types of libraries available:

• Layout library. These libraries consist of groups of other ScreenPad elements that you have opted to save in a particular configuration for easy reuse. Unlike the other two library types, only one layout library may be open at a time.

• Shape library. A shape library contains graphical objects of all sorts. These can be either created by hand in the internal editor (discussed in a bit) or imported from a graphic file. In the included My Shapes library, you have all manner of callouts, arrows, and boxes that you can customize for your needs.

• Text note library. This library contains text boxes. There are a number of default notes in you're my Text Notes library. You can create your own notes of various sizes, fonts, colors, and borders. They can contain default text (that you specify) or simply be blank. You can always tell a text note from a shape, as a text note will show a different icon when mousing over it:

  

To set a ScreenPad object on your screen, drag it out to its desired location or simply double-click the shape within the ScreenPad. Multiple objects can be added to the screen - these objects can be layered by dragging them over the top of one another. The order is determined by the order in which these objects were clicked, with the most recently clicked object on top.

In addition to what you’re given in the default My Shapes library, you can also import just about any image you want as a new shape. Just choose New Shape… from the Edit menu. In the New Shape dialog (under Background Image), choose Image file, and then browse to your image. You can use BMP, GIF, or JPG files.

So what if you want to get rid of one or more objects? Just right-click on the object, and then choose Close from the context menu^[*] that appears. To get rid of all your objects, choose Close All Objects. And if your various computing activities ever corrupt the display of one or more objects, simply refresh them by clicking Refresh Objects. As you’ve probably noticed, there are a great number of functions in this context menu in addition to the ones I’ve already mentioned.

The context menu of a shape object. The menu for text notes looks slightly different.

Let’s discuss a few of these options in greater detail.

Editing Text

Both shapes and text notes allow you to add or edit text, but they have different ways of going about it. With text notes, you can edit the text simply by double-clicking the object or choosing Edit Text… from the object’s context menu. The text will highlight and you can enter whatever you wish. Should you desire to alter the font or any of the text’s other characteristics, then right-click the text note and choose Edit Settings….

Editing a shape’s text is a bit trickier. You start the process the same way, either by double-clicking the shape or by choosing Edit Text… from the context menu. The Text Tool and Edit Text dialogs appear, as shown in the following figure.

The two dialogs you need to edit the text of a shape object.

The Text Tool dialog allows you to type in your text as well as specify formatting information, such as font, size, color, alignment, and style. The Edit Text dialog lets you move or resize the text box in order to change the text’s placement on top of the shape. To move the text box, place your mouse inside the box, then click and drag to a new location. To resize, click and drag on one of the box’s eight frame handles. You can also use the scale sliders at the bottom of the dialog to adjust the size of the shape itself. You can elongate the object to better fit the text by leaving Keep scale factors equal unchecked and by adjusting only one of the sliders, but to maintain the highest quality and avoid an undesirable “stretch” effect, keep the scale factors equal.

Editing the Object Itself

But the text isn’t the only thing you can change about these objects. As you first saw when editing the characteristics of one of your text notes, most of the object’s properties can be adjusted by choosing Edit Settings… from the context menu. In addition to editing the text itself, you have the following capabilities:

Open table as spreadsheet

Name	Icon(s)	Notes
Font…		Lets you adjust the font, font style, and size of your text.
Horizontal alignment		Choose from left-justified, centered, or right-justified text.
Vertical alignment		Place text at the top, middle, or bottom of the text box.
Font style		Bold, italic, and underline toggle buttons.
Word wrap		Choose whether you wish to have longer text wrap to the next line.
Text color		Click to choose the color of your text.
Bkgd. color		Click to choose the color of the box.
Width (pixels) Height (pixels)		This is the size of your box in pixels. You can adjust these numbers to exactly specify the object’s size.
Style		Choose the kind of frame border you want from a drop-down list.
Width (pixels)		Choose how wide you wish the frame to be. The upper limit of this value is dictated by the size of the object.
Color		Click to pick the frame’s color. This option is not available for all frame styles.

This is a rather comprehensive list, and adjusting these settings can produce just about any kind of text box you can imagine. But Screen- Pad’s shape objects take things even further. Unlike your text notes where only certain properties can be adjusted, you have pixel-perfect control over all your shapes. To get started, just right-click on any shape object, and then choose Edit Image… from the context menu. The Edit Image dialog appears, and you’ll see the image in a window to the left.

This is your workspace, where you can edit the image using the tools on the right. Between them is a slider that allows you to adjust the level of zoom on the object. This has no bearing on the size of the image itself, only on the view of the image in your workspace, so that you can more easily edit the object. As you can see, you have a metric ton of editing tools at your disposal, which are detailed in the table below.

Open table as spreadsheet

Tool	Description
	Cuts your selected area from the image for pasting into another part of the image. If the entire image is selected, everything will be cut.
	Copies your selected area from the image for pasting into another part of the image.
	Pastes anything cut or copied from the image. You are unable to paste in objects or text from other sources. If your selection area is too small to accommodate the clipboard contents, you’ll be asked if you want the contents cropped to fit the selection area.
	Clear removes the image or any selected part of it.
	Undo gets rid of your most recent change. Click Undo multiple times to purge an entire chain of oopsies if desired. The Ctrl-Z hotkey will do the same job.
	Redo redoes the doings you done undid. Pressing Ctrl-Y will work wonders as well.
	Magnify will zoom in on your image to let you more easily work with it. Moving the zoom slider downward will accomplish the same thing.
	Size to fit window zooms the image to the exact point where the entire contents of the image will just barely fit within the editing window.
	Clicking Resize will bring up a dialog that lets you adjust the size (in pixels) of the selection rectangle. The default values are the full dimensions of the current image. Reducing these values will automatically crop the image. If you have already reduced the size of your selection rectangle in the editing window by clicking and dragging on one of its frame handles, then checking the Crop to selection rectangle box will crop the image to whatever size the rectangle currently has. Additionally, you can set the color depth of the image here.
	Select Area will let you click and drag a subset area of the image so that you can work with that portion exclusively. This area is represented by a dashed frame in the editing window. It can be resized by clicking and dragging on one of the frame handles. You can move a selection (and the content it encompasses!) from its original spot by clicking and dragging it.
	The Select Color eyedropper tool will let you click any color in the editing window, and this color will then be represented in the Foreground Color box, allowing you to draw, airbrush, flood fill, and add text in this color.
	Flood Fill will fill any enclosed area of the image (using automatic border detection) with the color in the Foreground Color box.
	To insert text into your image, just click Add Text. A dialog will appear that will let you enter your text as well as adjust its format. You can change the placement of the text by moving or resizing the selection frame for the text in the editing window, which completely encompasses the image by default. Note: Unlike the text options for shape objects discussed earlier in this chapter, this text is not editable once you’ve laid it down. I therefore do not recommend using this tool unless you really, really want the text there forever.
	Airbrush is like a spray paint canister that you can use to touch up your shapes for an artistic effect. Either that, or use it to “tag” your shapes with all sorts of juvenile graffiti.
	While you can remove a large section of the image by selecting it and choosing Clear, Freehand Erase lets you control an eraser manually. Just click and drag over the area you want to erase.
	Freehand Draw acts like a pencil or a paintbrush, letting you draw all over the image by clicking and dragging.
	The Line tool allows you to draw straight lines. Just click, drag, and release. It’s a swell complement to the wavy lines of the Freehand Draw tool.
	Clicking the drop-down arrow of the Eraser Width tool lets you choose the width of your Freehand Erase command.
	Pen Width is similar, except that it applies to the width of your lines (from the Freehand Draw, Shape, and Line tools).
	These tools allow you to draw a Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, and Ellipse, respectively. Choose the upper row if you want a transparent (frame only) shape, the lower row if you would like the shape filled in with the foreground color, thus creating a solid (borderless) shape.
	For Foreground Color, click the drop-down arrow to select a new color, and any subsequent lines, drawings, shapes, and paint effects will show up in that color.
	The Transparency Color tool is used to select a color in the image that will show up as transparent. Just click the drop-down arrow to select a color, or alternately (and more easily), click the Select Color tool, position the dropper over the color you wish to make transparent, and then right-click.

Editing Opacity

Now that you have some ScreenPad shapes and text notes on the screen and have edited them to your liking, let’s try adjusting their opacity. After all, totally opaque images are so passé. Transparency’s where it’s at, and you can set the opacity of both kinds of objects, anywhere from 100% opaque (totally solid) to 1% opaque (almost totally invisible). By adjusting this setting, you can create cool ghostlike semi-transparent effects. To do so (with either shape type), simply right-click the shape and then choose Edit Opacity…. The following dialog appears:

Either drag the slider or simply enter a number from 1 to 100 into the % text field. The ScreenPad image in question will automatically update to reflect the change, so you can preview it before clicking OK.

Resizing ScreenPad Objects

Both text notes and shape objects can be readily resized. Since text notes are vector objects, however, they resize much better than do shapes, which may experience some pixelation when scaled way up or down. The technique for resizing an object depends on its type:

• Text notes. You can do an “eyeball” adjustment by simply clicking and dragging on the object’s border. For a pixel-perfect adjustment, however, you should right-click the note, choose Edit Settings…, and then alter the Width and Height fields in the Notes section.

• Shapes. Right-click the shape and then choose Resize… from the context menu. You can adjust the shape by percentage of the original size, anywhere from 10 to 600. The scale (the ratio of horizontal to vertical) will be kept even by default, but you can uncheck Keep scale factors equal if you want to stretch your shape. Note that even when executing this command more than once, the value entered will always reflect the percentage of the original shape (the one currently sitting in your ScreenPad library) as opposed to the percentage of the shape’s most recent size. For example, say you resized the shape to 200%, making it a lot bigger. If you resized again, this time entering 115%, the shape would be 115% of the size at which it started out, thus making it significantly smaller than it is currently. Click OK when you’re happy.

Cloning and Saving Objects

Every instance of an object on your screen is based on some sort of “pattern,” which is the corresponding shape in your library. At this point, it’s important to clarify the difference between screen objects and library objects, and how these two interact. A library object is the original shape or text note that sits in your library. You can clone objects within libraries by copying and pasting them in one of the following ways:

• Use the context menu. Just right-click the object and then choose Copy or Paste as appropriate.

• Select the desired object and then use Copy or Paste from ScreenPad’s Edit menu.

• Select the desired object and then use the Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V hotkeys.

You can paste copied items into either the same or a different library (provided that library is for the same object type), and it’s a good practice to do so if you plan on editing an object extensively. That way, you still have the original until you decide you like your new creation better. Library objects can be edited the same way as screen objects, either by right-clicking the object and then choosing the appropriate command from the context menu, or by selecting the desired object and then clicking a command in the Edit menu. You can get rid of any object in any library by selecting it and pressing Delete.

Now, once you drag that object onto the screen, a separate instance of it is created, which I call a screen object. This object can be edited to your heart’s content, and it will have zippo effect on the library object that spawned it. If you do edit the screen object and, in the end, prefer the changed version and want to save the changes back to the original library object, you may do so by right-clicking the screen object and then choosing Save from the context menu. You will see its corresponding library object automatically update. The changes are then saved.

The cool thing about ScreenPad objects is that you can spawn a gazillion of them from either the same or different library objects, literally populating the entire screen if desired. If you want another instance of your object on the screen, just drag it out again. However, there may be times when you edit a screen object and want to spawn a new copy of that edited object without saving it back to the library object. No problem. Just right-click the desired screen object and choose Clone. A brand-new instance of the edited object appears on your screen.

Working with Layouts

As you continue to work with your ScreenPad objects, eventually you’ll come to a point where you’ll need to save groups of them so that you can maintain more detailed layers of objects. This is where layouts come in. A layout is a saved configuration of objects where the properties of every object on your screen are preserved, including their exact locations. Say you’ve got a bunch of screen objects laid out and are just finishing with your recording session for the day. All you need to do is save these objects as a layout, and you can start fresh the next day, with all the ScreenPad objects displayed just as they are right now.

Here’s how you save a ScreenPad layout:

1. Assemble the various ScreenPad objects on your screen as desired. Make sure that their placement and layering is exactly as you’d like them. Remember that you alter the order of layering by clicking on each object in ascending order (the most recently clicked object will be on top).

2. Right-click on any screen object and choose Save Layout,or choose Save Layout from ScreenPad’s Edit menu.

3. The ScreenPad will pop up with a new layout. A generic name (Layout-xx) is given to it, but this name is already highlighted and ripe for renaming. Type in a name and hit Enter.

4. Later, when you want this layout to show up, simply double- click the object in the ScreenPad or drag it out onto the screen. No matter where you drag it, the layout’s objects will assume the position in which they were saved. Be careful not to call the layout multiple times, or you’ll have objects on top of objects.

If your needs change and you want to move these elements around, simply do so and then create a new layout from them. If you work with ScreenPad layouts frequently, there are hotkey functions available to help you be more efficient. From ScreenPad’s Options menu, choose Hotkeys…. There you will find three layout hotkeys available for your use:

• Next Layout hotkey. If you have multiple layouts in your current layout library, this will cycle forward in order by one layout.

• Previous Layout hotkey. If you have multiple layouts in your current layout library, this will cycle backward in order by one layout.

• Show/Hide Layout hotkey. This will toggle the current layout on and off.

These hotkeys are particularly useful for when you’ve developed a “stock” library of layouts you use fairly frequently. Now you can save time by quickly cycling among them.

Caution 

The actual execution of these hotkeys can be a little buggy. I’ve found that it helps tremendously to have your current layout library open before using these hotkeys.

Customizing the ScreenPad

In addition to creating custom categories by adding libraries, you can alter the view in your ScreenPad in several key ways. First, you can view the objects in each library by Icons and Names,by Icons Only, or by Names Only. Make your choice from ScreenPad’s View menu.

Note that this is a global setting, meaning that all libraries will be affected, not just the one currently open. If you do decide to view the object names, you can change them by clicking twice (not double-clicking) on the object’s name text.

Within the ScreenPad, a library object’s icon is generally just a shrunken view of the object itself (except for layout objects, which always use a stock icon). You can change icons for any library object (including layouts), if desired. Choose Edit > Icon, and then choose either Change Icon…, which lets you select a new icon from any .ico, .exe, .dll, or .bmp file, or Edit Icon…. This option gives you an editing window similar to that of the Shape editing functions. A current version of the icon will appear in the editing window, and you may change it to your liking.

^[*]While I find the use of the context menus to be incredibly helpful (and hence use them in my instructions), note that most of the commands available in an object’s context menu can also be found in the menus of the main ScreenPad user interface.