2 DuckShot Toolbar
2.6 Freehand Drawing
When you press on this icon, freehand drawing will be enabled. You can draw by pressing down the left mouse button, drag the mouse cursor, and release the left mouse button.
The editable properties of a free-hand drawing object are:
Line Thickness (1 to 8 pixels)
Color
The drawn object can be flipped horizontally and/ or vertically by dragging the resize handles. For example, the ‘6’ drawn above can become ‘9’ by dragging its bottom right resize handle and drag it across to top left corner.
2.7 Eraser
Press on this icon to erase any drawing object on screen. Your mouse cursor will change to a small rectangle shape to represent an eraser. You can either click on drawing object to delete it, or mouse down and drag across drawing objects to delete multiple objects at once. DuckShot does not support erasing part of the drawing object, whole object is deleted when eraser cursor comes in contact with the object.
2.8 Blur
Press on this icon to obfuscate any part of your screen using Gaussian blur effect.
The editable property of a blur object is:
Blur radius (1 to 50 pixels)
The following shows the blur effect of different blur radius setting:
2.9 Line
Press on this icon to draw line objects on screen. You can draw by pressing down the left mouse button, drag the mouse cursor any direction then release the left mouse button.
To make a curve or multi joint line, select the line object and adjust its anchor points (round handles).
To straighten a line, select the line and adjust its end position handles (square handles).
The editable properties of a line object are:
Line thickness (1 to 8 pixels)
Line tension (0 to 1)
Dash styles
Start and end arrows
Color
The following shows an example of different line tension effect and dash styles:
2.10 Shape
Press on this icon to draw a shape object. The shape object is a rectangle with adjustable corner radius. In other words, this object can transform in between a full oval to a full rectangle and any in between. To draw a shape object, press down the left mouse button, drag the mouse cursor in any direction then release the left mouse button.
The editable properties of a shape object are:
Filled or border with different dash styles
Corner radius (0 to 1, 0 means full rectangle, 1 means full oval)
Border thickness (1 to 8 pixels)
Color
The following shows effects of different corner radius settings:
2.11 Text
Press on this icon to draw a text object. There are 2 ways to draw a text object:
Click on empty space on your screen to create a text object with default width and height.
Press down the left mouse button, drag the mouse cursor in any direction to outline the width and height of the text area then release the mouse left button.
Either way, you can still select and resize the text object later.
The editable properties of a text object are:
Font type
Transparent or color filled background (auto contrast foreground)
Text alignment
Font size (8 to 72 pt)
Color
Similar to all other drawing tools, text icon dynamically changes as you change the settings of the drawing object. One thing special about text icon is that you can actually preview the real font size before you start typing, so there is no more trial and error to get the correct font size you need.
The following shows an example of text objects with different settings:
2.12 Step Counter
Press on this icon to add step counter object. There are 2 ways to add a step counter object:
Click on empty space on your screen to add a step counter object with default size.
Press down the left mouse button, drag the mouse cursor in any direction to size the step counter object then release the mouse left button. (Step counter object is forced to one-to-one width and height aspect ratio, in other words, it is always in perfect circle).
Either way, you can still resize the step counter object later. The first approach is more efficient because you can resize all step counter objects concurrently using the global radius setting.
The editable properties of step counter objects are:
Counter start number (all step counters will increment/ decrement accordingly)
Global radius which applies to all step counter objects (10 – 100 pixels)
Color
When global radius is adjusted, radius of all step counter objects are updated at once. There is no need to select them beforehand.
When one or more step counter objects are deleted or erased, the subsequent numbers will decrement automatically.
2.13 Sticker
Press on this icon to put stickers on your screen. To add sticker object, press down mouse left button, drag in any direction to size the sticker then release the mouse left button. Original width to height aspect ratio of the sticker is always maintained while you are sizing the sticker. DuckShot has prepared some preset stickers for common usage. You can add more stickers like your company logo, emoji, etc into the sticker library. You can remove your own stickers but preset stickers cannot be removed.
The editable property of a sticker object is:
Opacity (0.1 to 1)
Opacity is used to control the transparency of your sticker. It is a handy tool to make watermark on your documents.
To add more stickers, click on the Add Sticker button and a open file dialog will show up. You may select multiple image files at once.
Supported image file formats are:
PNG
JPG/ JPEG
BMP
You will see your stickers listed in the sticker library after you have added them. To remove sticker, simply select the sticker in the sticker library and press Remove Sticker button.
NOTE
Removing sticker from DuckShot library DOES NOT delete the original image file on your disk.
2.14 Settings
Press on this icon to access DuckShot application settings. You can find all application settings, software information, input your license key, activate and update DuckShot here.
2.14.1 Product Activation
DuckShot comes with 30 days full featured trial period. Once the trial period has ended, DuckShot toolbar will be disabled except Settings icon. You may consider to purchase a license key to continue using the software. Click on the Buy button and you will be directed to DuckShot web url to make a purchase. You can make one time purchase to get a lifetime license with lifetime software updates for FREE. Upon purchase, a 24 characters license key is emailed to you, and you can download the license key immediately upon successful transaction.
Once you have the license key, press the Activate button to input your license key. Note that you will need internet connection on your device in order to activate your product.
If you are prompted with User Account Control for consent to allow DuckShot to make changes on your device, press Yes.
Key in your 24 character license keys and press the Activate button.
After a few seconds, your product should be activated.
NOTE
DuckShot license key is hardware bound, which means you can only use one license key on one computer. Once a license key is activated, it cannot be uncommitted or used on other computer. The same license key can be used to activate the same computer again and again. The license key will still work even if you had uninstall and reinstall DuckShot, formatted your hard drives, or upgraded your hardware. DuckShot licensing server should be able to recognize your hardware as long as you did not completely overhaul your computer hardware. If you face any problem activating your product, please contact us through our website.
2.14.2 Software Update
You need to have internet connection on your device before you can update DuckShot. You can update the software manually or turn on the option to check for updates automatically. Turn on automatic updates does not mean software will be updated automatically. DuckShot will always prompt for consent before download and update the software.
If you pressed Skip button, software update will be canceled and nothing is downloaded. If automatic updates is turned on, DuckShot will check for updates again 2 weeks later.
If you pressed OK, DuckShot will proceed to download the latest version from DuckShot server.
When you are ready to update, you can either press the Update Now button or you can update and restart DuckShot through taskbar icon window. Note that update process will restart DuckShot, make sure you save your work before proceed with update.
If you are prompted with User Account Control for consent to allow DuckShot to make changes on your device, press Yes.
After a few seconds, you should see a notification window shows up and inform that DuckShot has been updated successfully. Press OK to start DuckShot.
If you press on the Setting icon, you should see the software version has already been updated to the latest version.
2.14.3 Description of Settings
Under the About section, you may find other relevant information like web URL to this guide, DuckShot home page, as well as DuckShot EULA and information relevant to third party software libraries used by DuckShot.
Under Behaviour section, you can configure to launch DuckShot automatically whenever your computer start up. It is recommended to turn this option ON so you do not need to manually launch DuckShot on every start up.
You can include or exclude mouse cursor. This option applies to both image and video.
Depending on your habit, or if you find yourself regularly needing to minimize DuckShot to taskbar notification area manually, you might want to turn ON the auto minimize features. You can turn ON this feature to auto minimize DuckShot when you copy image to clipboard, or when you quick save image, or both.
Besides, you can also control the time duration of notification window stays on screen.
You can set the quick save folder to store all the quick save image. Press on the button which shows your current quick save folder to change to another location. It is recommended to keep the default quick save folder as it is. By default, DuckShot is using %USERPROFILE%\Pictures\DuckShot as quick save folder. If you need to change the quick save folder, it is recommended to set the location to a user specific folder. There are 2 benefits of using user specific folder:
Only you can access your images. Using common shared folder means your images might mix up and shared with other users within the same computer.
User specific folder does not require elevated permission to access. DuckShot does not run with elevated permission by default. Using a quick save path that requires elevated permission (Program Files folder, Windows folder, etc.) will cause unauthorized access exception. To prevent this exception, you need to manually configure DuckShot to always run as administrator, which is unnecessary in the first place.
DuckShot does not quick save directly in the selected quick save folder. Instead, DuckShot will always create sub-folders and auto name the quick save files up to 999 files, and create next sub-folder when necessary. Although NTFS (the most widely file system in Windows) supports over 4 billions of files in a folder, but in reality, enumerating tens of thousands of files could have a noticeable delay even with Windows explorer. Performance is much worse if your storage is over a network or USB drives. With auto creation of sub-folders and auto naming of the files, DuckShot can save unlimited number of files without degrading file system performance.
NOTE
Sub-folder naming conventions: DS<YY-MM-DD> <hhmm> (timestamp based on first image saved in this folder)
File naming conventions: DS001 – DS999
Besides, you can choose the default image file format to use. Not only quick save, all of the images including full screen capture, window capture, and scrolling capture, will be saved using this default image file format.
DuckShot supports the following image file formats:
PNG
JPG/ JPEG
BMP
TIFF
GIF (single frame)
WMP
Depending on your habit, when you make a full screen capture, window capture or scrolling capture, you can choose to copy the image to clipboard or quick save them (hyperlink is generated in clipboard instead).
Lastly, you can choose your favorite accent color for DuckShot. It is recommended to use a color that stands out from the background color that you commonly working with.
2.15 Minimize Toolbar
You can press the Minimize button (Minus button) to minimize DuckShot, or you can press the Escape key to do the same. The Close button (X button) does exactly the same thing, except it will clear all drawing objects on screen before minimize.
NOTE
Close button does NOT quit DuckShot. To quit DuckShot, you will need to use Exit button of DuckShot taskbar icon window. See Chapter 4.6 for more details.