How can I print out a friend's Facebook engagement announcement?
March 14, 2011 2:39 PM Subscribe
I need help with a Facebook project: printing out a friend's engagement announcement with all the congratulatory comments that follow.
Two friends of mine recently got engaged, and as an engagement gift I would like to print out their announcement on Facebook. The trouble is, it's 73 comments long, and I need help with a couple of the logistical details:
- How to take a screenshot of the whole thing? The only way I know to do screenshots on my Mac is command-shift 3 or 4, but this one would involve some scrolling down to get all the comments. I'd want it to be pretty high-res too, I think, for the printing. Any other ideas rather than a screenshot are of course welcome.
- Best way to print a custom-sized photo? It'll be (obviously) narrow and long.
Any other ways to make this a cool and memorable project are greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help you can offer!
Two friends of mine recently got engaged, and as an engagement gift I would like to print out their announcement on Facebook. The trouble is, it's 73 comments long, and I need help with a couple of the logistical details:
- How to take a screenshot of the whole thing? The only way I know to do screenshots on my Mac is command-shift 3 or 4, but this one would involve some scrolling down to get all the comments. I'd want it to be pretty high-res too, I think, for the printing. Any other ideas rather than a screenshot are of course welcome.
- Best way to print a custom-sized photo? It'll be (obviously) narrow and long.
Any other ways to make this a cool and memorable project are greatly appreciated. Thanks for any help you can offer!
With SnagIt, you can take a scrolling screenshot and you can set the dpi to whatever you want. There's a 30-day full trial version here. SnagIt is dead-simple to use.
posted by Houstonian at 2:46 PM on March 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Houstonian at 2:46 PM on March 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
The Firefox plugin Abduction can save a whole page screenshot.
posted by Paragon at 2:48 PM on March 14, 2011
posted by Paragon at 2:48 PM on March 14, 2011
Paparazzi is a free Mac utility that will let you enter the URL and it'll screenshot the whole page for you, and give you options for what format to save it in.
Since it's on-screen to begin with, 72dpi is the highest res it's going to get, regardless of which utility you use to screenshot it. You can never make something higher res than the original, and any artwork that originates on-screen will be 72dpi. So print quality will not be great, no matter what you do.
The best case scenario quality-wise is for you to print it at 100% scale, without shrinking or enlarging it. Printing it on a professional-grade printer rather than your home printer will yield the highest possible quality in terms of sharpness and colors. You may be able to find a professional printer in your area who will walk you through the options, but changing the size of the paper to fit the size of the screenshot, and centering the artwork within the paper would make sense to me.
posted by nadise at 3:22 PM on March 14, 2011
Since it's on-screen to begin with, 72dpi is the highest res it's going to get, regardless of which utility you use to screenshot it. You can never make something higher res than the original, and any artwork that originates on-screen will be 72dpi. So print quality will not be great, no matter what you do.
The best case scenario quality-wise is for you to print it at 100% scale, without shrinking or enlarging it. Printing it on a professional-grade printer rather than your home printer will yield the highest possible quality in terms of sharpness and colors. You may be able to find a professional printer in your area who will walk you through the options, but changing the size of the paper to fit the size of the screenshot, and centering the artwork within the paper would make sense to me.
posted by nadise at 3:22 PM on March 14, 2011
Maybe I'm missing something, but couldn't you just highlight the text and use a word processor? Resolution would not be an issue then, but of course you lose all the pictures.
Another way would be to open the specific thread with comments in its own window or tab, then save it as html. Your browser should allow you to include all images in this. In this case only the resolution of the images is set, the text is just that - text.
posted by amf at 3:45 PM on March 14, 2011
Another way would be to open the specific thread with comments in its own window or tab, then save it as html. Your browser should allow you to include all images in this. In this case only the resolution of the images is set, the text is just that - text.
posted by amf at 3:45 PM on March 14, 2011
Best answer: I just had to do this for work last month. Print the web page to PDF, which will give you nice high-resolution text for the comments (although the pictures will not improve.) Then cut it up in Photoshop and rearrange the pieces in a 300-DPI .psd file, then export the finished product back to PDF (or whatever format you want to print in.) You can get around the narrow-and-long problem by rearranging comments into columns.
posted by Sam Ryan at 5:44 PM on March 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Sam Ryan at 5:44 PM on March 14, 2011 [1 favorite]
You also could also go artistic, and reframe the project to have the announcement status in the middle, and all the comments around the status, making the project whatever size you want. The comments could circle the status in different ways, or be angled all around it, or in straight lines with certain ones bolded or in different typesettings. Or go really artistic like this.
posted by jenlovesponies at 4:08 AM on March 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by jenlovesponies at 4:08 AM on March 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
Best answer: In order to get the full page in one PDF, make the page size super long. You can do that under Page Size in the print dialog box—scroll to the bottom and choose Manage Custom Sizes. Make it I dunno 8.5" x 50". Then click yr PDF button in the bottom left corner. That should do it!
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:25 AM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:25 AM on March 16, 2011 [2 favorites]
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Go to a photo processing place in person; they can help you.
posted by Madamina at 2:46 PM on March 14, 2011