Using Drag & Drop

You can also insert images with Drag & Drop. Just drag the image file into the editor window and drop it where you want to insert it.

Using the Insert Image tool

Note that you can also insert multiple images at the same time. To do this, just select multiple images in the Open dialog. All the settings you choose in the dialog then apply for all the images selected.

•Click in the editor at the position where you want to insert the graphic.

•Select Insert > Image in the Write tab. displays the Open Image dialog:

See Editing image attributes below for details of all the attributes and what they do.

Probably the quickest way to insert a graphic is pasting directly from the Windows clipboard. Just copy the graphic in your graphics editor or any other program, then click in the Help+Manual editor where you want to have the graphic and press CTRL+V or select Paste in the right-click context menu or the Help+Manual toolbar.

This opens a Save File dialog with an automatically-generated filename. You can then choose where you want to save the file and change the name. It's advisable to use a descriptive name instead of the automatic name. For long-term compatibility avoid spaces, accented characters, non-alphanumeric characters and any special characters in the names.

Where to save

If possible, save your graphics in the project's own graphics folder(s), which should be inside the project folder. Then you can move the project around with the entire folder without having to change any settings or manage graphics locations.

Pasting transparent PNGs and GIFs

When you paste a graphic stored in a clipboard you will always get a graphic, but when pasting from some applications you may have problems with PNG and GIF files with transparent areas. For example, this will happen if you paste from the Snagit screenshot program. If you experience this, try the Paste from HTML option in the Help+Manual Paste menu.

These programs only store a non-transparent bitmap in the clipboard, but they also include a snippet of HTML code that links to the actual transparent image that they store on the disk. When you use Paste HTML with an image in the clipboard Help+Manual checks for code like this and gets the actual image it references.

Image name not editable when pasting HTML:
You can't change the name of the pasted image directly when you get it via HTML code. This is because Help+Manual needs to copy the actual image that has already been saved to disk. So you need to accept the file name generated by your graphics program when you paste and change it later if necessary.

When working on your documentation you will frequently want to update a graphic image. There are a couple of methods you can use to achieve this quickly and efficiently:

Paste the new image over the old image in the editor

This is the fastest solution if you are replacing the entire graphic with a new or edited version. Note that this only works for single-layer images! If you do this with an Impict IPP image containing multiple layers (objects) all the layers in the original image will be replaced by the pasted image.

1.Select the graphic in your editing program and copy it to the Windows clipboard.

2.Click on the old version of the graphic in the Help+Manual editor to select it.

3.Press CTRL+V to paste your new version over the old version.

This will automatically replace the old version in the editor and the file on the disk with the new version. (You will be prompted to confirm you want to do this).

Edit the image in place

Instead of editing the image in a separate location, use your graphics program to edit the version stored in your project's image folder directly. This is to only way to speed things up for Impict .IPP images with multiple layers, because you can't paste them in with the method described above.

After editing, you can refresh the image in the current topic in Help+Manual in the following ways:

•Right-click on the image in Help+Manual and select Picture > Reload.

•In the Project tab, Select File > Reload Topic in the Manage Topics section.

•Switch briefly to another topic and back to the topic containing the image.

To edit the attributes of an image in the Help+Manual editor just double-click on it with the mouse. This displays the Insert Image dialog again, where you can add or edit all the attributes:

Tip: Align the caption with image styles

You can change the alignment of the image caption (left, center, right) by defining an image style.

•Image Style applies an image style that you have defined. This defines a border and the image dimensions.

•Alignment can make text wrap around the image with the Left or Right options.

•Padding adds empty space around the image (in pixels). You can set values for individual sides with .

•Display Size controls the display size of the image on the page. See Responsive Images for more details on how to use these options to optimize your graphics for responsive layouts.

oPhysical image size displays the image in its native size.

o% of physical image size scales the image to the percent you define. This is static – the image size does not change with the window size.

o% of page with, maximum is physical size scales the image in relation to the page width or the width of the table cell, if the image is in a table. However, the image never expands beyond its native width. This uses 99.90% as the trigger value, but the result is still 100% of the native width.

oScaled to full page width scales the image to the size of its container (page or table cell) without limit. The image will expand beyond its native size if necessary.

Preventing excessive scaling:
Use the % of page with, maximum is physical size setting to prevent "inflated" and "jaggy" images on larger screens. When you using this setting the image will only expand up to its native width but will not zoom further to prevent excessive scaling.

•Tooltip is a text displayed when the mouse pointer is over the image.

•Caption is displayed below the image (formatted with the Image Caption style) and is included as the ALT attribute in HTML-based image formats. It is required for the Table of Figures function in Word DOCX output (images without captions are not included in the Table of Figures).

•Add to Table of Figures inserts a figure counter variable. See Figure and table counters for full details on using this feature.

•Picture ID adds an ID that can be used as a link target in topic links. It can also serve as a unique reference in HTML and for hyperlink references to the figure counter reference.

•HTML Class add an optional HTML class name to the image for referencing all images with this class in your own CSS and JavaScript code (unlike the ID, which can only be used for a single image in the same topic). You can also add multiple HTML class names separated by spaces if you need to.

You don't need to worry about entering the pixel dimensions of your graphic as you would have to do in an HTML editor. Help+Manual does this automatically.

The Add to Table of Figures option in the image dialog automatically inserts a figure counter variable in the caption and includes the image in the internal list for the generation of a table of figures for the project. These tables of figures, tables and other items can be used in both PDF and Word DOCX output. See Figure and table counters for details and full instructions.

If you set the Display Size in the image dialog to % of page width or scaled to full page width, the zoom value you enter is relative to the container of the image. This is the page width if the image is inserted directly on the page or the table cell containing the image if the image is in a table.

In HTML output formats this makes the images responsive. This means that the images will automatically scale with the size of the window.

Use image styles for sizing images

Defining an image style allows you to set an absolute or relative width (% of page width) for all images in a class. This ensures that all the images will be displayed with the same width on the page without you having to apply individual settings to each image. You just need to select the style for the image.

Preventing excessive scaling

If the width is defined as any percentage less than 100% (i.e. up to 99.90%), the image will only expand up to its full native width but will not zoom further to prevent excessive scaling. Setting a width of 100% turns this off and allows unlimited scaling. The % of page width and scaled to full page width options do this for you automatically. The first sets the width to 99.90%, the second sets it to 100%.

Putting responsive images side by side

If you set the image widths to add up to less than 100% you can put multiple responsive images on the same line and they will display side by side. The only exception to this are images with captions: These must be put in tables if you want to display them side by side, because otherwise the caption container will create a new paragraph after every image, even if the images fit on the page side by side.

Responsive images in table cells

Note that when responsive images are in table cells their width is relative to the table cell, not to the page. So you could have three images in a table side by side in three cells, each with a width of 80%, for example. Each image will then be 80% of the width of the cell containing it, leaving 10% space on either side.

Responsive images with captions side by side

When images have captions they have an invisible container around the image that encloses the caption and keeps it with the image. This container always creates a new paragraph in HTML output. To put responsive images with captions side by side you must put them in a table. Otherwise each image will be in a separate paragraph, even if they would actually fit side by side.

You can set separate padding values for each side of the image by entering multiple values in the Padding field. The easiest way to do this is with the popup menu displayed when you click on in the Padding: field.

You can set the values manually: For all four sides (1 value), vertical and horizontal sides (2 values) or each side individually (4 values). The values apply in the same way as HTML values, clockwise from the top – i.e. top right bottom left.

If you use the EC Software HelpXplain application for animated screencasts and infographics you can also insert HelpXplain slides as static images. This makes it possible to use HelpXplain as an alternative screenshot editor and create edited screenshots with a more modern look and feel than the older Impict utility.

How to insert a HelpXplain slide

Note that this method always inserts the first slide in your HelpXplain .xplain file as a static image. So the .xplain you use should either contain only one slide or the first slide should be the one you want to use.

•Click in your topic where you want to insert the image.

•Select the Image tool in the Write tab and select the .xplain file containing the slide you want to insert.

That's all there is to it. The first or only slide in the Xplain will be inserted as a static graphic image and will then behave like any other graphic. The same padding, positioning and formatting apply as for other graphics.

Conversion of Xplains for HTML

Xplains are converted to HTML-compatible graphics using the same settings as for all other bitmap files. The settings are in Configuration > Publishing Options > WebHelp/Microsoft HTML Help > HTML Export Options. Your static image Xplains will be converted to PNG, JPG or GIF, depending on your settings there. If you choose the JPG+GIF option they will be converted to JPG, since Xplains are always full-range color images.

You can also insert unsupported graphics formats by opening them in a graphics program that supports them and copying them to the Windows clipboard. Then just paste the clipboard contents in the Help+Manual editor. You will be prompted to save in an external file and you can then choose the format you want to save in.

•Copy the graphic to the Windows clipboard in the source program.

• Click in the editor at the position where you want to insert the graphic and press Ctrl+V or select Clipboard > Paste in the Write tab.

•You will be prompted to save the graphic in an external file.

•Give the image a descriptive name and save it in your project's graphics folder rather than the main project folder.

•To edit the graphic insertion properties double-click on the graphic to reopen the Open Image dialog.

•The formatting of the caption text is controlled by a standard style called Image Caption. You can change this for the entire project by editing the style.

•You can also change the appearance of the caption text by applying font attributes directly. To do this select the graphic in the editor, then select the font attribute you want to apply (bold, underlined, font etc).

Note that you can only format the entire caption text. You cannot apply different font attributes to individual parts of the text. For more details see Image caption and comment styles.