Using Course Images in Other Applications or on the Web

There are a variety of ways to use course images in other applications, or post them on the Web:

• Use the "File / Save As..." menu item to save the course image as a GIF file, and use the GIF file in another application.
• Use the "File / Save As..." menu item to save the course image as a BMP file, and use the BMP file in another application.
• Copy the course to the clipboard, and paste the course image as a bitmap into another application.
• Copy the course to the clipboard, and paste the course image as an enhanced metafile into another application.

If part of a course is selected when the "Edit / Copy" menu item is used, only the selected part of the course will be copied to the clipboard. If you then paste the course image into another application, only the selected shapes will appear in the course image. If you want all shapes to appear in the course image (the usual case), you need to either select all shapes before you use the "Edit / Copy" menu item, or, more simply, deselect all shapes. The easiest way to deselect all shapes is to click on a part of the course that does not contain a shape.

For posting course images on the web, it is highly recommended that course images be saved as GIF files. It is strongly recommended that you not copy and paste the course image onto the web page. Most tools for creating web pages will paste the image as a bitmap, and convert the image to a JPEG image file (.jpg file suffix). Although the JPEG image format works fine for photographs, it works very poorly with line drawings such as a course image.

For including a course image in most other documents, the recommended method is to copy and paste the course image as a bitmap, as long as you are sure the other application will not convert the image into JPEG format. If pasting as a bitmap doesn't work well, the recommended method is to use a GIF file. Using the BMP file format is only recommended for use with older applications that don't support the GIF file format. BMP files and GIF files will in general result in the same image quality, but GIF files will be smaller at the same resolution.

See also: Sending a Course in an E-mail or Other Message, Using the Clipboard