Helpinator allows you to capture screenshots of active windows with part of their background. Image Library serves as a storage for screenshots. There you can add annotation to screenshots and create clones. You can also assign category and automatically create topics for captured screenshots.

Mode – select what you want to do – capture new image or recapture image that already exists in the library.

If you choose to capture new image you have to specify File name format and category for image. You can use several predefined placeholders:

If you choose to REcapture image you need to specify it in the drop-down list. Only background will be replaced, shapes will remain the same. You can use this trick to update cloned images easily. Here’s an article with detailed instructions:

http://www.helpinator.com/blog/2011/08/26/why-you-should-use-cloned-images/ 

- “Image Format” – specifies image format to store images to. You can select between PNG, BMP, JPEG and GIF.

- “Create topic” – if this option is checked then right after a window is stored to the library Helpinator creates topic with the same name containing captured image.

- “Append to topic” – if this option is checked and topic is selected from the drop-down list, Helpinator adds captured image to the end of the topic.

- “Background width” – specify what part of the active window background to capture along with the window itself. For example, if set to 30 pixels, then Helpinator will capture active window and surroundings with 30 pixels to the left, right, top and bottom. Set to 0 if you don’t want to capture background.

- “Background Effect” – select effect to apply to the background of the window. You can select from Blur, Darken, Pixelate and so on.

- “Drop shadow” – check this if you want active window to have a shadow on the background.

All this options combined allow you to take screenshots like this:

- “Hotkey” – select hotkey to trigger screen capture. Default is “Ctrl-Alt-S”

To start capturing images click on “Start” button.

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Basically there are two ways to do it:

1. Using “Convert to H3 project” tool.

2. Using “File->Import files…” command.

Convert to H3 project

This tool is under "Helpinator” start menu group. When you run it dialog like this appears:

Source type – select type of the source files here. You can import:

1. Old Helpinator project

2. Compiled CHM file (if you don’t have the source for it).

3. HTML Help compiler project – if you were authoring CHM files using standard Microsoft tool – Help Workshop

4. RTF/HTML/TXT/DOC files – import variety of text file formats, from selected folder. To Import DOC files you need to have Microsoft Word installed.

Source – path to the source files or directory with source files (in case of source type #4).

Destination type – select type of Helpinator project to create. Single-file project stores all data inside one zip-compatible project file. “Multiple files” mode is better if you use come kind of VCS system in your project.

Destination – path to destination project. A filename or a directory path, in case of destination type #2.

Language – select default language for the project with imported data.

Click “Run” to start conversion. After it’s done you’ll be able to open destination project in Helpinator.

File->Import Files

This command acts identically to the “ RTF/HTML/TXT/DOC ” option from above, but is more useful to import files into existing projects. Select path to the directory with files to import and click “OK”.

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