Document Figures Screenshot and Storage

bturep
I often import documents into Zotero which have figures or illustrations which I would like to use and keep track of. Ideally, I would be able to "screenshot" the illustration within Zotero, which would then create a .png that is saved as a note under the specific item. Ideally, this would be citable like the entry itself and, also ideally, all "notes" that are .pngs could be viewable or managed like in Tropy?

I have used Tropy for image management, but I would very much like to avoid the awkward workflow of taking a screenshot of the figure, importing it into Tropy for storage and ease of search, then switching to zotero for citation.

Is there a one-stop-shop for this? Or an integration between the software that I am unaware of? Does this workflow suggest any solutions, either in workflow or possible future Zotero features?

Thanks for your thoughts!
  • adamsmith
    You can select areas (i.e. images) in the Zotero PDF readers, which then become annotations and can be extracted into notes -- I think that should get you what you need?
  • bturep
    edited June 3, 2024
    Thank you for your reply. After my original post, I figured I would work through something similar. Specifically:

    I select the area to save an area annotation
    then Command+Shift C on the tab to copy the tab's bibliographic info
    then I select the annotation in the panel and 'Save image as'
    then paste the tab's bibliographic info as file name, editing it to just include author and title, and append a number (01,02,03 etc,) working my way through the document's figures.

    I then import into Tropy and add the date, cross referencing with Zotero.

    I was wondering/hoping there might be a quicker integration method, as this workflow does get tedious when working and cataloguing a lot of images!

    Ideally, the bibliographic data, including page number, would be added to the .png as metadata.
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