Image basics

[community_help]

This question was posted in response to the following article: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/robohelp/robohtml/WS9B67D0AF-955F-416e-9556-A2A062BB2037.html

[Guest]

Dear Adobe,

As before I used to author documentation with Help & Manual, I have to create a folder to store all images in the project. When an image need to change, I just copy and paste another image with the same name to this folder and the image in topic is automatically updated. Or if I want to add a new image for any topic, first I put that image to this image folder, then I locate it from Help & Manual to add to topic. This workflow sounds very simple.

Now I'm working with RoboHelp, I wonder how workflow is ? I know RoboHelp give Images folder and Baggage folder to store images. But I don't know how to use it ? If I want to maintain all images in a project, what should I do ?

[Willam_van_Weelden]

Hi,

You're on the forum, so this isn't Adobe speaking. Since you created a comment in the help, your comment was placed on the forum.

What version of RoboHelp are you using? I assume you are using version 9.

When you use an image in your topic, the image will show up in the 'images' folder. When you want to replace the image, you can simply go to the image in windows explorer and paste the new image over the old one. Just like you were used to. When the new image has different dimensions than the old image, you need to reset the image size in RoboHelp. There's a script you can run to quickly do this for you. See the image resizer script on http://www.grainge.org/pages/authoring/scripts/scripts.htm

Baggage files are files that you add to your project to include in your output. When using images, your images will automatically be taken to your output. But if you want to add a pdf file to your help for download, you add that to the baggage file.

Greet,

Willam

[RoboColum_n_]

RoboHelp does not work in the same way as Help & Manual.

If you want to add an image to a topic, the way to do this is to use the Insert Image toolbar icon or menu item. This presents a dialog that allows you to navigate the image file. You select it, which displays a preview of the image and click OK. The image is then added to your topic. The image is added to the RoboHelp project folder where the topic is located. Just be aware that in a RoboHelp project you can organise topics into folders, so that an image can exist just about anywhere.

If you change an image that already exists in a topic, things start to get a little more complicated. Provided the amended image is exactly the same size as the old one, and you have used the same file name, you can just overwrite the old file with the new file. If the file name is the same but the file size is different, you can still overwrite the file but you'll have to reset the file size inside each topic where that image is used. This is easy, by right clicking on the image and clicking on the Reset Size menu item. Finally if you use a completely different file name for the new image, you will have to add the new image as if the old one wasn't there. You may also want to use the Unused File report occassionally to tidy up your project - i.e. remove files that are in the project directory but which are no longer required.

[Peter Grainge]

Colum: I don't think  Reset Size is to do with file size, rather it is about image dimensions so if 600px by 400px becomes 300px by 200px then Reset Size shows the image at its new size rather then being stretched.

There is also a point that hasn't been mentioned so far. As Colum says, the image is put into the root folder of the project but can be moved to any folder. In Project Manager, there are two views. One shows the topics and images as you would see them in Windows Explorer, the other shows all the folders under Topics and just shows the topics with another pseudo folder called Images again with all the folders and just showing the images in them.

An important difference between Help and Manual and RoboHelp is that you can have duplicate image names in RoboHelp as long as those images are in different folders. With Help and Manual you cannot have different image names even if the images are in different folders.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

To RoboColum(n): After adding images to topics, I see they appears in the folder of the project file. Just imagine if I have 1000 images in the project, so how I control them well.

My way is create my own Graphics and subfolders as well to store all my images used in the project. Everytime I add an image to a topic, I will locate to that folder.

And I tried to replace an image with another image with the same name but different size. I don't see any complicated thing you mentioned and look like RoboHelp just accepts it.

[Peter Grainge]

Re your first response to Colum, I have covered that in my reply.

Re your second response, are you talking about file size or image size? RoboHelp will let you replace a file with the same name but if the image size (not file size) is different, you may need to use Reset Size. Note the word "may". In RoboHelp 9 I believe it will be OK unless you have resized the image in RoboHelp and the parameters then include the dimensions. Reset Size will correct.

In this thread it is important to differentiate between file size and image size.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

@petergrainge

[Guest]

Peter,I meant I replaced an image with another image with the same name but different image size and file size as well.

Your answer is very clear. Thank you.