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Wiley considers both screenshots and line art to be figures. A screenshot is a picture of the image on your screen that you take by using a screen-capture utility - either one that comes with the most popular computer operating systems (such as MS Paint) or specialized screen-capture software (such as Collage) available commercially.

When capturing screenshots, it's critical that you follow the Wiley figure standards. The resulting image is mostly shades of gray, which may not look very good on-screen, but experience shows that this color scheme produces the clearest images in the final printed book.

Line art is considered to be any image that must be drawn by hand. Network diagrams, flowcharts, and schematics are examples of line art. You can create line art with your favorite graphics program, or you can simply draw it by hand on a sheet of paper. The Wiley Graphics staff will render the final image based on the hard copy that you submit.

If you have any questions about figures, please contact your DE.

You should begin by using this step-by-step process to set the right resolution and color palette for your book. Take the screenshots using an appropriate screen capture software program.

Important: Remember to shoot all your screen shots at the same screen resolution. We generally recommend 800x600, but this can vary from book to book, so talk to your editor.

It's critical that you supply your Editor with a test screen shot before you begin shooting the actual shots for your book. The Figure Submittal Standards document that you should have received provides more information about what to shoot for this test screen shot. Ask your editor if you have questions.

The only file formats that screenshots should be saved in are .pcx, .tif, or .bmp. Production will reject any other format. (Note: You do not have to use the same format for every figure throughout as long as you use one these three file formats.)

You can create line art in whatever program you choose. However, line art must be submitted in hard copy or in some form that your DE can print. Our editors do not have access to special graphics software, such as Visio, PhotoShop, or Illustrator. So if you use special graphics software to create your line art, be sure to send a hard copy to your DE or, when appropriate, embed the graphic in a Word file that your editor can print. The Wiley Graphics staff will redraw your figure from the hard copy submitted by your AME.

Submit figures in their own separate, appropriately named file. Unless otherwise instructed, do not embed figures within the text files. For a chapter submission to be complete, all electronic figure files (or hard copies, in the case of line art) for the chapter must be submitted when the chapter is submitted.

You may want a screenshot to be cropped, so that only a portion of the figure appears in the book. If your screenshot shows several windows, but only the top-most one is relevant, only that window should appear in the finished book. The rest of the figure should be cropped out. You have several options for cropping your figures:

• Crop the figures yourself by having your screen-capture software shoot only the active window. For example, if you are capturing screens by using the PrintScrn button in Word, you can capture just the active window by pressing Alt+PrintScrn. Only figures cropped using a screen-capture program are acceptable to Graphics. Figures cropped manually (pixel-by-pixel) are not acceptable.
• Shoot the full screen and then insert a note under the figure caption in the chapter file explaining how the figure should be cropped. Be very specific.
• Shoot the full screen and save the file (named as 548492 fg0602, for example). Then, using a graphics program, add electronic cropping marks to the actual figure file, save it under a different name (548492 fg0602crop.pcx, for example), and mail both versions to your DE. This method is more time-consuming than the others, but some graphics-savvy authors like handling their cropped figures this way.
• Shoot the full screen, print the figure, use a colored marker to draw lines (called crop marks) around the portion of the figure that you want to show, and mail the hard copy to your DE.

Occasionally, you may want to have a callout added to a figure to call attention to one or more particular elements of a screen capture. A callout is a short label that consists of an explanatory word or two with a line connecting the callout to the appropriate portion of the figure. You can indicate callouts by printing the figure, writing the callouts on the hard copy, and mailing the hard copy to your DE. Alternatively, you can insert a note under the figure caption in the chapter file stating what the callout is and what (precisely) it should point to.

Note: Your chapter is not considered complete unless all figures are submitted (in their own separate files) with the chapter. Figures are due the same day the chapters are due.

See Naming Conventions.

You should type a figure caption line at the point in the chapter where you want our layout technician to place each figure. To insert the figure caption, type the word Figure (with a capital F), the figure number, a colon, a space, and then type the text of the caption. Apply the FC (figure caption) style to this line. The caption line should look like this:

Figure 1-1: My figure caption.

Be sure to use a hyphen between the chapter number and the figure number. The caption should be a concise description of what the figure shows. End the caption with a period, even if it is not a complete sentence.

Besides the figure caption, each figure must also be referenced somewhere in the text before the figure actually appears. Here are some ways you can reference your figures:

Figure 10-14 shows a Web Form created in Visual Studio .NET.
You can create a Web Form in Visual Studio .NET, as shown in Figure 10-14.
You can create a Web Form in Visual Studio .NET (see Figure 10-14).