Fiddling: PasteOff Image Saving Thing
As I mentioned in my post about MSN Spaces, I've got this weird habit of wanting to convert clipboard BMPs into JPGs directly, with a minimum of actual steps expended.
So, I hacked together a little applet - let's call it version 0.1 - that converts any bitmap on the clipboard to a JPG in my My Pictures folder. I like doing this kind of thing, it helps me relax.
I called the project PastePal, after considering PasteOff (say it with a Sean Connery accent, and you'll understand why. Perhaps.).
Disclaimer: Don't Ever Use This Software. It's an Alpha. It might wipe out important images, and/or your hard drive. The risk is yours.
It's all run from a notification-not-system-tray Icon.
The flow works like this:
- Get your source image onto the clipboard.
- I just discovered that OneNote actually does this for you while taking a screen clipping, so thanks OneNote for saving an extra Ctrl-C. So, for me, step 1 is just Right-click the OneNote icon, choose Create Screen Clipping, select desired screen area.
- If you want to type a descriptive name, double-click the notification area (aside: maybe we could just bite the bullet and call it the tray like everyone else does?) icon to bring up the preview window.
- The icon should change colour to indicate an image is now on the clipboard. Illegal characters are removed or replaced, but it's not a competition to break it, okay?
- If you just want a random-ish name, right-click the tray icon and choose Save Directly. A temp file name will be used.
- All images go straight into the My Pictures folder. Not yet configurable.
- In both cases, if the save is successful, the app puts the full path and filename of the saved JPG file on the clipboard, ready to be pasted into a web upload form or File Open box, or whatever.
Notes:
- Saving overwrites without prompting. It's an Alpha, don't use a filename you're likely to reuse or that is even remotely similar to other filenames when you remove the funny characters from it and replace spaces with underscores.
- The preview window tiles images, there's no scroll bar, and images tend to linger even after being invalidated. I don't really mind. It should work OK for the next one.
- If nothing seems to be happening when you Do Things, the icon's probably gone "blue".
- Don't forget to use the clipboard text before copying the next item to the clipboard.
On the cards for When I Feel Like It:
- Support for target folders other than My Pictures as a target! (very likely, very soon).
- Support for multiple "save profiles", with different commands for each. Maybe. It kinda seems like the "20" part of 80/20.
- Optionally run a batch file on the output. Makes my MSDN blog stuff easier if I do that...
- A little more robustness/user friendliness. Can't hurt. Can it?
- I'm sure there's a reason you might not want the clipboard overwritten with the end filename. So perhaps turning it off might be an option. Sometime.
- Optional Prompt Before Overwrite.