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Configuring ShareX with Paint.NET and PngOptimizer

Posted: Thu Jul 16, 2015 6:32 pm
by webfork
The following process enables ShareX to export to Paint.NET and then get compressed by PngOptimizer. This setup is ideal for users that deal almost exclusively in screenshots. This is meant to highlight some of the advanced operations around the very tweakable ShareX screenshot tool. I’m using Paint.NET due to it’s popularity but other graphic editors will work just as well. PngOptimizer meanwhile has been a reliable and fast tool for additional PNG file compression.

Before you begin: Paint.NET must be installed (there is sadly no portable version) or another graphics program of your choice and PngOptimizer must be somewhere on your system.
  1. Open the main window
  2. Choose “After capture tasks” and put checkboxes next to “Save image to file” and Perform actions”

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  3. Open “Task Settings...”
  4. Choose “Actions” from the menu
  5. Choose “Add” and enter the Name and File Path (C:\Program Files\Paint.NET\PaintDotNet.exe)

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  6. Choose “Add” again and enter the Name and File path for the PngOptimizer.exe file (mine happens to be inside C:\dontbkup\PortableApps):

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  7. Test by generating a screenshot. Paint.NET should open and give you the chance to make changes to your file. When you save your results and close this window, PngOptimizer should open and compress the resulting file. Note that if you do a File - Save As operation, you will need to run PngOptimizer separately.
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Note: that there is a command line version of PngOptimizer that might work better here but this is just a quickie intro. I didn’t use FileOptimizer as it spends a LOT of extra processor cycles on PNG files that the average user will not benefit from.

Re: Configuring ShareX with Paint.NET and PngOptimizer

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 9:48 am
by webfork
I've changed up my screencap+edit+compress process a bit.

Editor: I tried to get away from using Paint.NET as it's neither portable nor open. Plus the Greenshot editor included in ShareX is getting pretty good so I'm finding I don't really need a separate editor.

Compression: As mentioned in the entry above, the compression offered by FileOptimizer is better (it includes PNGOptimizer in it's compression sequence) so I'm now using that program
  1. Copy FileOptimizer to a duplicate folder with another name. I changed it to FileOptimizer-PNG ONLY

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  2. Configure the settings to link to the FileOptimizer folder. Make sure to check "Hidden Window"):

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  3. Open the program and choose Optimize - Settings to use the "fast" and set the process priority to "Normal":

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  4. Move some of the slower compression tools including leanify, advpng, pngwolf, and pngout to \png optimizers:

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    NOTE: leanify is a great tool used in MANY other compression operations so make sure you use the other FileOptimizer instance for any other compression.
Processing on my 2.3 ghz i5 under Win7x64 takes about 9 seconds.

Re: Configuring ShareX with Paint.NET and PngOptimizer

Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2016 10:27 pm
by TP109
Very informative. I again reviewed the screenshot apps tested and the only other app other than Greenshot, ShareX, and PicPick that can be setup similarly is ScreenshotCaptor. It is also the most lightweight of the four. Although I didn't check, I'm sure MiniCap is able to do it too, but only through the command-line.

Re: Configuring ShareX with Paint.NET and PngOptimizer

Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2016 2:47 pm
by webfork
TP109 wrote:Very informative.
Thanks
TP109 wrote:I again reviewed the screenshot apps tested and the only other app other than Greenshot, ShareX, and PicPick that can be setup similarly is ScreenshotCaptor. It is also the most lightweight of the four. Although I didn't check, I'm sure MiniCap is able to do it too, but only through the command-line.
Good to know. ScreenshotCaptor for example doesn't have a dotNET requirement so if you were in a situation where that was unavailable for some reason, it would be nice.

I love setting up automation systems like this for portable software as they're much faster/easier to deploy than tools requiring installation.