Overview
ZoomMagic is a powerful tool to magnify any portion of your screen, measure distances
or capture a screen area.
Targeted users are:
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Designers and developers on the hunt for those lost pixels,
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.. or in the need for a fast screencapture,
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Users with visual impairments,
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Anybody who needs to measure distances/areas, find the shortest distance between A and B
or quickly zoom into a screen portion.
Screenshot:
Zoom Up/Down
use the mouse wheel to zoom in/out at the mousecursor or doubleclick
the left/right mousebutton. You may also use the hotkeys
'+','-' or the Quickzoom popup at the upper left corner. Select 'Smooth Zoom'
from the
Mainmenu to have a less
pixelized display.
Move ZoomMagic
left-/rightclick the window anywhere (except the buttons!) and move it.
Tip: it is easier to click in the zoom display to move the window.
Measure Distance
Click the 'Measure Distance' button to activate the 'Measure Distance' mode.
Click a point in the active Zoom window to start measurement. If the 'Show Bottom Panel'
is active, the distance in pixels is displayed at the Bottompanel. Below the display of
the pixels-distance,
the distance in the selected unit is shown. The default unit is 'cm' and refers to the
screen resolution (pixels per cm). To change the unit, rightclick the bottom statuspanel to show the
Units Popupmenu and choose a unit from the 'Select Unit' entry. You may also select
the unit from the Mainmenu.
To gauge (or scale) the unit, doubleclick the bottom statuspanel to
edit the value or alternatively choose 'Gauge Distance' from the Units Popup or the
Mainmenu. To measure an area, place the
points surrounding the area and finally press the
hotkey 'a' to close the line (or, alternatively, hold
down the shiftkey and doubleclick a point within the window). The
surrounded area's value is displayed after the length's value.
The Units Popupmenu (also mirrored into the Mainmenu in 'Measure Distance' mode):
Click 'Set Default' to reset the units to 'cm'and the screen resolution.
Press the Delete- or ESC-key to cancel Measure Distance mode.
Capture Image
Click the 'Capture Image' button to capture a dedicated portion
of the screen. Draw and adjust the running frame to the area to be captured. The
position and dimension of the frame is shown on the Bottompanel and corresponds to
the Zoomlevel. Use the Keyboard Cursor Hot Keys as described below
(Hot Keys in 'Capture Image' mode) to fine adjust the frame.
Click the 'Capture Image' button again or use the frame's right popup menu to cancel
capturing, to capture to the clipboard or to a file. Saving to a file, you may adjust
some compression parameters in the
Settings-Dialog. The file-savedialog remembers the
last saved filetype and offers this as default (the first extension in the 'Save as type'
dropdown).
You may also use the hotkey CTRL + c to copy the entire view to the clipboard.
Supported file write formats:
Joint Photographic Experts Group (*.jpg)
JPEG2000 (*.jp2)
JPEG2000 Code Stream (*.j2k)
CompuServe images (*.gif)
Standard Windows bitmap images ( *.bmp)
TIFF images (*.tiff )
Truevision images (*.tga )
ZSoft Paintbrush images (*.pcx, *.pcc)
Portable pixel/gray map images (*.pxm, *.ppm, *.pgm, *.pbm)
Press the Delete- or ESC-key to cancel capturing.
Zoom at Screen Cursor
Click the 'Zoom at Screen Cursor' button or the hotkey 'c' to magnify the screen
portion around the current mouse location. Adjust the parameters of this mode in the
Settings-Dialog.
Press the Delete- or ESC-key to cancel 'Zoom at Screen Cursor' mode.
Visual impaired users
ZoomMagic offers useful functions to help users with visual impairments to
enlarge and read portions of the screen.
1. Set ZoomMagic into the
Zoom at Screen Cursor Mode
to magnify the screen portion around the current mouse location.
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If 'Smooth Zoom' is on (hot key 'z'), you may increase and decrease
the Zoom level in 0.1 steps using the up/down arrow keys or use the
slider in the
Settings dialog.
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You may hide the cursor by unchecking the 'Show Cursor' Checkbox in
the
Settings dialog.
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When editing text, the Zoomfocus follows the Caret if the 'Follow Text Input' option
in the
Settings dialog is checked.
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You may force ZoomMagic to only be visible if the cursor is above
a certain window. To use this feature, in the Zoom Cursor Mode,
move the cursor to the window you want to zoom and press the
left CTRL-Button. To return to normal mode, press the right CTRL-Button
or from the taskbar, click the ZoomMagic icon and 'Restore'.
2. 
Align to screen borders
Clicking one of the red arrows in the 'Align to Screen Border' button aligns
the window to the top, bottom, left or right of the screen and automatically switches to
'Zoom at Screen Cursor' mode. Alternatively, use the hotkeys
'Pg Up', 'Pg Dn', left or right arrow key to align to the borders.
Press 'h' to hide the Top- and Bottom Panel, press 'h' again to
reshow them.
Press 'ENTER' or click the blue sphere in the middle to return to the previous state
(position and size).
Mainmenu
The Mainmenu drops down clicking the
button or using the hotkey combination ALT + m and
shows the following entries:
Smooth Zoom:
Check 'Smooth Zoom' to have a less pixelized display.
Stay on Top:
Switch 'Stay on Top' on/off to change the StayOnTop property.
Settings..
Opens the Settingsdialog:
Adjust parameters for
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General: Options to display the Colorvalue, the Zoomlevel or Mouseposition on
the Bottompanel.
Show the Zoom Focuspoint (the point where you zoomed in/out). If this option is on,
the Zoom Focuspoint is indicated with little black markers at the borders of ZoomMagic:
Set the format and type of the colorvalue. Set the intermediate Zoomvalue
in 0.1 steps for the 'Smooth Zoom' Mode with the slider at the bottom.
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Zoom at cursor: In 'Zoom at Screen Cursor' mode, the area around the cursor is captured
on a regular basis. This might - depending on your system - impact systemperformance.
Adjust the refreshrate here.
If you want the Zoomfocus to follow the Caret when editing text, check the 'Follow Text
Input' option.
To hide the cursor, uncheck the 'Show Cursor' Checkbox.
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Capture to file: Adjust some compression parameters when capturing to file.
The higher the Jpg-Quality value, the better the image quality will be,
but the larger the file size. The lower the Jpg-Quality value, the smaller
the resulting file size will be, but at the expense of picture quality.
Tiff Compression 'Packbits' is a lossless compression method.
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Appearance: Skinoptions to adjust the appearance of ZoomMagic.
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System: Shows the screen resolution of the display in Pixels Per Inch. This
value is used for the default 'Measure Distance' scale.
Windows vista and higher: switch the Aero style permanently OFF/ON.
Hot Keys
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+,- : zoom up/down.
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d : switch 'Measure Distance' mode on/off.
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p : in 'Measure Distance' mode, remove the last point.
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a : in 'Measure Distance' mode, close the contour and calculate the surrounded area.
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c : switch 'Zoom at Screen Cursor' mode on/off.
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z : switch 'Smooth Zoom' on/off.
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h : hide/show borders, Top- and Bottompanels.
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b : hide/show the Bottompanel.
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Delete : Return to normal mode.
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CTRL + c : copy view to clipboard.
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CTRL + Keyboard Cursor Keys : move the window one pixel in the corresponding direction.
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CTRL + SHIFT + Keyboard Cursor Keys : move the window twenty pixel in the corresponding direction.
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ESC : Editing the gauge value, resets this value, otherwise return to normal mode.
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Right CTRL : stop the 'zoom only the window below the current cursor position' mode (measuring distance, cappture screen).
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F1 : show this help.
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F5 : refresh.
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ALT + m : drops down the Mainmenu.
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ALT + F4 : Exit.
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CTRL + w: switch OFF/ON windows aero style. Only for vista and higher windows version.
The aero style introduced with vista might obscure the performance
of ZoomMagic (resulting in some flickering).
permanently switch Aero OFF/ON
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ALT + Pg Up : align at screen top and switch to 'Zoom at Screen Cursor' mode.
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ALT + Pg Dn : align at screen bottom and switch to 'Zoom at Screen Cursor' mode.
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ALT + Arrow key left: align to the left of the screen and switch to 'Zoom at Screen Cursor' mode.
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ALT + Arrow key right: align to the right of the screen and switch to 'Zoom at Screen Cursor' mode.
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Enter : return to the state (position and size) before aligning to the screen borders, normal mode.
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Left CTRL : in 'Zoom at Screen Cursor' mode, zoom only the window below the
current cursor position.
Hot Keys in 'Capture Image' mode:
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Keyboard Cursor Keys : move the frame one pixel in the corresponding direction.
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SHIFT + Keyboard Cursor Keys : size the frame one pixel in the corresponding direction.
Register
To register, open the About Dialog (Mainmenu,
About/Register entry) to
find the serial of the program. With this serial, visit
www.PeakStars.com
to obtain the Registration Key.
LICENSE
ZoomMagic is provided as freeware for private, non-commercial use. You
may install and use it on a computer that is your own personal property and
not used for commercial purposes and you are the primary user of the
computer.
The professional features :
- measuring distances,
- screen capture,
- show color values at sceencursor,
maybe tested for a 30-day evaluation period.
TOP
OF PAGE
Tutorial: How I finally found the length of my jogging distance.
To find the length of my NY jogging distance,
I visited
www.MapQuest.com
to get a map of Manhatten:
First, I select the unit, let's choose km:
Second, use the scale of the map to gauge ZoomMagic:
Third, I draw a line along my jogging path.
As I also want to see the enclosed area, I close the line with the hotkey 'a'.
Et voilą,
finally I found my NY jogging distance
to be 10.57 km or 11560 yards or 6.57 miles,
enclosing an area of 1.98 km².