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From: beginner on 7 Nov 2007 07:51
In article <fgn7ij$9kf(a)aton.abo.fi>, beginner <not.this(a)address.spam.no> wrote:
>Could someone show me how I could write a little code
>to open 'A.bmp' in Paint, and save it from Paint in 16
>colours by using SendKeys or some better way? Thanks
>very much.

Surely this can't be impossible or a very stupid question. I have seen
that I can start programs with Shell and it is possible to use SendKeys
to operate that program, but I am not sure how to open and save files
with different options. Can someone help? Is there a good Internet site
where I can read about it? Thanks very much.

From: mayayana on 7 Nov 2007 09:10
It's probably possible, but it's fairly awkward. That's probably
why you haven't got an answer so far. I think that Sendkeys
has been blocked in Vista, too, though I'm not certain
of the details about that.

What you probably want is VBScript. You can use the
WScript.Shell object, which has a Run method, to open
Paint. The same object has the Sendkeys method.
See here for some sample code for that object:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/scripts.php3#shell

The download has samples of both the Run and Sendkeys
methods.

You can also post to the VBS group for help:
microsoft.public.scripting.vbscript

And it would be well worth downloading the Windows
Script Host help file, which includes VBS help. It should
be at the link below, but Microsoft's site is a mess with things
regularly being moved around and forwarding links missing.
If you don't find the download try a search for script56.chm.

WSH v. 5.6 help:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=01592C48-207D-4BE1-
8A76-1C4099D7BBB9


You can control *some* programs through code. If you're
interested in that you might want to look up "automation".
Automation is Microsoft's term for making software accessible
from the outside. For instance, you can create an instance of
Internet Explorer or MS Word from script or VB and make them
do pretty much anything through code. But automation has
to be built into a program, and it's pretty much limited to
IE and MS Office.

> >Could someone show me how I could write a little code
> >to open 'A.bmp' in Paint, and save it from Paint in 16
> >colours by using SendKeys or some better way? Thanks
> >very much.
>
> Surely this can't be impossible or a very stupid question. I have seen
> that I can start programs with Shell and it is possible to use SendKeys
> to operate that program, but I am not sure how to open and save files
> with different options. Can someone help? Is there a good Internet site
> where I can read about it? Thanks very much.
>


From: Mike Williams on 7 Nov 2007 14:01
On 7 Nov, 12:51, not.t...(a)address.spam.no (beginner) wrote:

>> Could someone show me how I could write a
>> little code to open 'A.bmp' in Paint, and
>> save it from Paint in 16 colours by using
>> SendKeys or some better way?
>
> Surely this can't be impossible or a very
> stupid question.

Don't call me Shirley! [just kiddin']

Why are you using the word "surely"? It may be both of those things,
or it may be neither, but since you don't know how to do it yourself
then you can't be "sure" about the answer to that question :-)

Perhaps the help and support contract you purchased has expired? But
seriously, the people who answer questions here do it voluntarily in
their own free time and they do not earn a penny for their troubles.
If you want their help then perhaps you should have a bit of patience.
You only posted your question a couple of days ago, and this group
does not get the traffic that it once did.

Judging by your newsgroup name you are a beginner in VB. Has it
occurred to you that perhaps the "little code" you have requested
would in fact be a great deal of code and not the simple job that you
appear to think it is? MS Paint does not "open itself up to the
outside world" as do some other applications (as far as I know it does
not expose any methods) so everything you do would need to be done by
sending it the appropriate key messages. But what keystrokes do you
think you are going to send to MS Paint, even if we told you how to
send them? You could send Ctrl O to open a file and you could send it
the keystrokes representing the full path and name of the bmp file and
then you could send it Alt O to open the file. But what are you going
to do then? You can't send it Ctrl S to save because if you do that
then MS Paint will simply save the file in its current state and at
its current colour depth, so you are back where you started! Somehow
you are going to have to get it to perform a "Save As", but that
operation does not have a shortcut key (at least not in my version of
MS Paint) and so you are going to need to add lots of extra code to
find the File menu and then more code to move the mouse to that
position and click it. Then you're goping to have to find the "Save
As" submenu item and click that and then . . . it goes on and on, all
sorts of stuff, including dispensing with the message box that MS
Paint would pop up warning you about loss of colour quality. So, as
you should now be able to see, it is not a simple job using "a little
code". Not a simple job at all. Now can you understand why you have
not yet had any responses?

Having said all that, I personally don't think that messing about with
MS Paint is the best way to do this kind of thing. The Windows API has
all sorts of functions for creating bitmaps of all different sizes and
colour depths and it is possible to create a memory DC containing a
bitmap of the desired colour depth and to write some code to load your
original full colour (or whatever) bitmap and mess about with your
original pixel colours in such a way that the resultant reduced colour
depth colour bitmap is a reasonable representation of the original
full colour image (or at least as reasonable as it is possible to get
at the colour depth you require). But this kind of thing is hardly the
stuff of beginners (as you appear to be). If you're interested in
trying that method then you might like to look at the VB Accelerator
code at the following link:

http://www.vbaccelerator.com/home/vb/code/vbMedia/Image_Processing/Colour_Depth_Reduction/article.asp

Otherwise, I'm sure there are various freeware libraries that can
perform these tasks for you and that can be controlled from your VB
program. In fact I know that there are. I don't know the name of any
of them offhand because I've never used them (although the name
FreeImage has just popped into my head?), but I'm sure others here
will post a link for you, if you have a bit of patience ;-)

By the way, as far as I understand your original question you are
after a way of converting a full colour 24 bit bmp into a 16 colour
bmp file. Is that what you actually want to do? If so then are you
aware that converting it instead to a jpeg can give you just as much a
reduction in file size (or more, of you require) while maintaining a
lot more of the original colour information in the file? Or does your
original full colour bitmap contain no more than 16 individual colours
anyway, and you want to preserve all of them on a pixel by pixel
basis? If so then have you thought about converting to some other
format, such as a gif, which would give you a greater range of colours
than a 16 colour bitmap and yet achieve similar file size reduction?
There are all sorts of possibilities, but none of them are the "simple
little bit of code" that you appear to think they may be :-)

Incidentally, you haven't said which version of VB you are using. If
it is the "real" VB (Visual Basic 6 or previous versions) then that's
fine, but if it is the imposter (the thing with "net" attached to it
somewhere) then you are in the wrong newsgroup and you'll need to post
your question to a dotnet group. In fact, just to show that I don't
really have anything against dotnet (!) you should be "home and dry"
if you are using it because it gives you native access to the new GDI+
stuff, which should make your current specific task very easy.

Mike


From: mayayana on 7 Nov 2007 14:34
Another note, in addition to the two answers you
have so far: If you don't want to get into VB using
Windows API (which is quite involved and difficult to
follow if you're not familiar with it) you can also
use IrfanView via command line. It has a full set of
command line options, including a BPP switch that
will change the color depth. It's all in the IrfanView
help. That would be a lot less messy than trying to
use Sendkeys with Paint.



From: beginner on 8 Nov 2007 10:34
In article <13j44s7fjkogp81(a)corp.supernews.com>,
mayayana <mayaXXyana1a(a)mindXXspring.com> wrote:
> Another note, in addition to the two answers you
>have so far: If you don't want to get into VB using
>Windows API (which is quite involved and difficult to
>follow if you're not familiar with it) you can also
>use IrfanView via command line. It has a full set of
>command line options, including a BPP switch that
>will change the color depth. It's all in the IrfanView
>help. That would be a lot less messy than trying to
>use Sendkeys with Paint.
>

Thanks to both of you who have responded. I would like
to be able to learn a little bit about SendKeys as well
as solve my real problem - creating too many image files
in bmp which have little information in the colour, so
16 colours are enough. But now I realise that these are
not quite for beginners (my level).

I took your advice and besides looking at the site you
mentioned, started looking for "automation" of programs
in Windows on Google but could not find good pages. I
will appreciate if you could suggest me an Internet site
where I can read about automation.

I would like to learn VBScript when I have several hours
of more or less continuous time, may be after Christmas.
It is presumably very similar to VB 6 and VBA.

IrfanView is not a small program. If it were, I would look
at it in a different way. I would like to manage with
minimal extra code, and preferably without using third
party stuff - the second party being Microsoft.

Thanks again. Mike did not succeed in frightening me, but
thanks to him also. I don't believe things are as difficult
as he makes it sound like.
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