I have been simply using the PrtScn button to get shots of areas etc. But they are really grainy, I have seen others' screenshots and they look pretty nice compared to mine. Is there a better way?
Screenshot resolution - How to make it better?
Débuté par
Morbane
, sept. 24 2010 03:23
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#2
Posté 24 septembre 2010 - 05:04
Lugaid of the Red Stripes
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Buy a better computer? The print screen button gives you a screen shot, which should be just as pretty as what you see in-game.
Another option is to get a image-editor like GIMP and use it to take a screen shot of the toolset. The toolset always uses the high-res textures, so it tends to look a bit better. Plus you can turn on all the shadows without worrying about framerate.
Another option is to get a image-editor like GIMP and use it to take a screen shot of the toolset. The toolset always uses the high-res textures, so it tends to look a bit better. Plus you can turn on all the shadows without worrying about framerate.
#3
Posté 24 septembre 2010 - 05:21
kamalpoe
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I generally take mine in the toolset unless I want to show something from ingame.
#4
Posté 24 septembre 2010 - 06:44
rjshae
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Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...
Buy a better computer? The print screen button gives you a screen shot, which should be just as pretty as what you see in-game.
Another option is to get a image-editor like GIMP and use it to take a screen shot of the toolset. The toolset always uses the high-res textures, so it tends to look a bit better. Plus you can turn on all the shadows without worrying about framerate.
If you are using a high end graphics card, it is possible that the screen shot may not capture all the detail. The print screen button doesn't always properly capture what the graphics card outputs.
#5
Posté 25 septembre 2010 - 01:57
dunniteowl
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What format are you saving them in? You normally should be saving as a .jpg and be aware that some programs ask you what quality setting (and if I recall correctly, MS-Paint and the GIMP tend to want to reduce the quality to about 85% (for some bizarre reason)) and it's easy to miss the slider for it. Be aware of that as a possibility.
I have an X1650 Pro PCIe w/512M and my screen images are pretty much WYSIWYG when I take them. I open MS Paint and Ctrl-V it into the application then click save as and make sure I am saving as .jpg with full quality.
If you plan on taking more than one screenie, then leave your picture app open and just Alt+Tab back to it after each screen shot, Ctrl-V, then save as. Of course, be sure to pick a set of names that make it easy for you to locate them (and make sure you put them where you want them right off the bat, too.)
Other than that, I have no other suggestions beyond maybe cranking up the screen resolution itself before taking screenies. Also you can turn on Normal Mapping, that tends to smooth out the details a bit too.
dno
I have an X1650 Pro PCIe w/512M and my screen images are pretty much WYSIWYG when I take them. I open MS Paint and Ctrl-V it into the application then click save as and make sure I am saving as .jpg with full quality.
If you plan on taking more than one screenie, then leave your picture app open and just Alt+Tab back to it after each screen shot, Ctrl-V, then save as. Of course, be sure to pick a set of names that make it easy for you to locate them (and make sure you put them where you want them right off the bat, too.)
Other than that, I have no other suggestions beyond maybe cranking up the screen resolution itself before taking screenies. Also you can turn on Normal Mapping, that tends to smooth out the details a bit too.
dno
#6
Posté 25 septembre 2010 - 05:02
Morbane
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Thanks everyone.
I have been using an old - quick-to-load program - i will try using gimp from now on.
Will see what happens with things soon enough
I have been using an old - quick-to-load program - i will try using gimp from now on.
Will see what happens with things soon enough
Modifié par Morbane, 25 septembre 2010 - 05:05 .
#7
Posté 26 septembre 2010 - 04:33
casadechrisso
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No no no no... not so complicated.
NWN2's default screenshot settings are just plain horrible, the jpg compression must be close to the maximum. Nothing you can do with an imaging program there to make it better.
Go into the nwn2.ini in your My Docs/Neverwinter Nights 2 folder and change "ScreenshotFormat=jpg" to "ScreenshotFormat=bmp".
You'll notice an incredibly better quality. File size of the screenies is larger, but these days, who cares, and you'll get exactly what you see in game.
NWN2's default screenshot settings are just plain horrible, the jpg compression must be close to the maximum. Nothing you can do with an imaging program there to make it better.
Go into the nwn2.ini in your My Docs/Neverwinter Nights 2 folder and change "ScreenshotFormat=jpg" to "ScreenshotFormat=bmp".
You'll notice an incredibly better quality. File size of the screenies is larger, but these days, who cares, and you'll get exactly what you see in game.
#8
Posté 26 septembre 2010 - 11:00
M. Rieder
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Are you using the screenshots that get saved in the NWN2 folder, or are you taking the screenshot and pasting into a graphics program?
I do the latter and it works very well for me. As others have recommended, GIMP is very good.
I do the latter and it works very well for me. As others have recommended, GIMP is very good.
#9
Posté 27 septembre 2010 - 04:25
casadechrisso
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I guess I was thinking of in game screenshots, not toolset. So here's the toolset variation: Increase the rendering resolution in the toolset options. The default is something like 800x600, which gives you the grainy and blurry look you probably also have while building areas. Go into the options (I'm not exactly sure how the specific option is called now, but look for whatever looks like a screen resolution) and change it to your native monitor resolution (e.g. 1600x1200).
This will put more strain on your graphics card of course, but if you're not having the lowest end card, it should still be fine - I only work with native graphics settings and have no problems.
This will put more strain on your graphics card of course, but if you're not having the lowest end card, it should still be fine - I only work with native graphics settings and have no problems.
#10
Posté 27 septembre 2010 - 11:51
dunniteowl
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No, casadechrisso, you hit PrtScrn and then Alt+Tab (or open it if it's not already) and just CTRL+V into your image program and save as .jpg (and yes it does matter how big it is, most image hosting sites limit your file sizes and storage amount, so the smaller a file you can make then the better for you over time.
If you take a screen shot, whether in-game or in-toolset, don't go and find the images in the NWN2 folder, just copy paste what's in the clipboard and you get whatever resolution your screen is set to at the time of the screen capture. If the image is reduced in quality, image resolution or whatever by the game's storage mechanism, it doesn't matter if you're not using it to make your image.
IN this manner, you skip over whatever NWN2s engine does to the screen shot to compress it or store it, because you're using the OSs current resolution settings for the image, which are then stored on the clipboard (that's what they call the CTRL+V/CTRL+C widget these days) until you take another image with the PrtScrn key.
Thanks for the information about the image settings in the .ini file though, that could make for some useful images without having to go back and forth while you're playing a game, for example instead of trying to show something specific.
dno
If you take a screen shot, whether in-game or in-toolset, don't go and find the images in the NWN2 folder, just copy paste what's in the clipboard and you get whatever resolution your screen is set to at the time of the screen capture. If the image is reduced in quality, image resolution or whatever by the game's storage mechanism, it doesn't matter if you're not using it to make your image.
IN this manner, you skip over whatever NWN2s engine does to the screen shot to compress it or store it, because you're using the OSs current resolution settings for the image, which are then stored on the clipboard (that's what they call the CTRL+V/CTRL+C widget these days) until you take another image with the PrtScrn key.
Thanks for the information about the image settings in the .ini file though, that could make for some useful images without having to go back and forth while you're playing a game, for example instead of trying to show something specific.
dno
#11
Posté 27 septembre 2010 - 01:10
casadechrisso
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I still prefer the .ini method for a simple reason, dunniteowl. Or two actually. The first one is, you have the full quality once you changed it to bmp - there is no reduction in quality whatsoever with that setting. And the main advantage for me is what you'd call a disadvantage in your post, that it actually stores the files in a neat order all in the same place, and you can edit them whenever you want, instead of having to run both your image program + the game at the same time and need to paste your screenshot before making a new one.
That's maybe because of the way I work.. when I'm making area screenshots I'm doing it ingame like a photographer with a SLR: I'm running around my town and hit PrtScreen at multiple angles multiple times until I have a dozen pics or so, then I quit game, browse through the screens in the NWN2 folder and sort out what I consider not so good, mark what I consider better, and only when I decided on the best shots I finally open them in GIMP, Photoshop or whatever.
That's maybe because of the way I work.. when I'm making area screenshots I'm doing it ingame like a photographer with a SLR: I'm running around my town and hit PrtScreen at multiple angles multiple times until I have a dozen pics or so, then I quit game, browse through the screens in the NWN2 folder and sort out what I consider not so good, mark what I consider better, and only when I decided on the best shots I finally open them in GIMP, Photoshop or whatever.
#12
Posté 27 septembre 2010 - 02:08
dunniteowl
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Sure that works. The naming scheme of the in-game shots, though is pretty hard to follow. So then you'll have to open them up later, edit, then rename, then make sure you're getting the order right. I mean, I get it, I did it that way at first and found it just too hard to do and keep straight.
The reason I do it the way I describe is that, instead of pretending to run around with my SLR (and I do photography btw, so I totally get the reference) I am literally composing my images and then placing them into frames concurrently. Unless, as I said, you're actually playing the game and are trying to do cameo shots throughout and continue play, I personally don't see the need to not jump back and forth. I mean, it's not like you're in a hurry or that you have to get something before you miss it, right? This is especially true if your purpose is to provide demonstrative images for others in a post, blog, or "How To..." set of images.
I don't consider your method a disadvantage in terms of workflow -- everyone's gotta do things the way that works best for them.
However, my experience is that .bmp is not all that superior in overall image quality to .jpg. I think if there were that much a greater overall quality difference, then all of our digital SLRs out in the world would be using .bmp instead of .jpg. Now that said, I know .bmp is higher quality, but not so much for the differences in storage sizes between the two and, as I mention earlier, you can change the default settings (in fact, you should) for the image quality during transfer.
A lot of my shots, when I first started getting into taking screen shots came out crappy, because I was saving them to .jpg and NOT checking the quality slider and was having my image quality reduced to like 85% of the original. Which is easy for the the eye to see, unless you're converting to a thumbnail or something.
AS to the storing of the files in NWN2, that's sort of a 'backup' for me, but the image capture should still be the settings you're using to play the game. If you set the screen resolution to 800x600 for playing, then your screen caps are going to be that as well. Or they should be. There's still a lot of quirks I have found in the settings and coding over the last 4 years that I can easily lay at the feet of the Devs and ask, "What possessed you to do this?"
I would suspect that the ini settings could definitely fall into this category of, "We didn't do that as well as we should have, we ran out of time," sort of excusing.
I like the SLR references though and the photographer running around. In my particular case, I do a LOT of before and after shots, as well as Toolset to In-game comparison shots where what is more important is that the images in both (before/after or toolset/in-game) have to be lined up as closely as possible to match each other to make the comparisons useful. In that manner, I have to do a lot of Alt+Tabbing between the toolset and an in-game instance, so doing one more to the screen shots into a paint program at that point is easier than waiting to collect all my shots together.
Once I get to editing the shots, all I am usually doing is cropping out useless (or spoilerific) information visually (like toolset tabs and the like or place names that give away my module's name in progress -- sum of my stuf is sooper sekrit) or adding in text boxes and arrows to highlight the images for whatever I am going to post along with it.
So there may be quite reasonable reasons for the differences in your methods and mine. And again, that's a fair point. If you have a way of doing things that works for you, then by all means you should do that. Some folks do things differently and get just the same end results and that's what matters.
Can I ask if you have checked to see if your screenshots are the same resolution per the ini setting versus, say, changing the screen resolution in the Graphics Options and having the ini be changed based on that? That would be good to know as well.
best regards,
dno
The reason I do it the way I describe is that, instead of pretending to run around with my SLR (and I do photography btw, so I totally get the reference) I am literally composing my images and then placing them into frames concurrently. Unless, as I said, you're actually playing the game and are trying to do cameo shots throughout and continue play, I personally don't see the need to not jump back and forth. I mean, it's not like you're in a hurry or that you have to get something before you miss it, right? This is especially true if your purpose is to provide demonstrative images for others in a post, blog, or "How To..." set of images.
I don't consider your method a disadvantage in terms of workflow -- everyone's gotta do things the way that works best for them.
However, my experience is that .bmp is not all that superior in overall image quality to .jpg. I think if there were that much a greater overall quality difference, then all of our digital SLRs out in the world would be using .bmp instead of .jpg. Now that said, I know .bmp is higher quality, but not so much for the differences in storage sizes between the two and, as I mention earlier, you can change the default settings (in fact, you should) for the image quality during transfer.
A lot of my shots, when I first started getting into taking screen shots came out crappy, because I was saving them to .jpg and NOT checking the quality slider and was having my image quality reduced to like 85% of the original. Which is easy for the the eye to see, unless you're converting to a thumbnail or something.
AS to the storing of the files in NWN2, that's sort of a 'backup' for me, but the image capture should still be the settings you're using to play the game. If you set the screen resolution to 800x600 for playing, then your screen caps are going to be that as well. Or they should be. There's still a lot of quirks I have found in the settings and coding over the last 4 years that I can easily lay at the feet of the Devs and ask, "What possessed you to do this?"
I would suspect that the ini settings could definitely fall into this category of, "We didn't do that as well as we should have, we ran out of time," sort of excusing.
I like the SLR references though and the photographer running around. In my particular case, I do a LOT of before and after shots, as well as Toolset to In-game comparison shots where what is more important is that the images in both (before/after or toolset/in-game) have to be lined up as closely as possible to match each other to make the comparisons useful. In that manner, I have to do a lot of Alt+Tabbing between the toolset and an in-game instance, so doing one more to the screen shots into a paint program at that point is easier than waiting to collect all my shots together.
Once I get to editing the shots, all I am usually doing is cropping out useless (or spoilerific) information visually (like toolset tabs and the like or place names that give away my module's name in progress -- sum of my stuf is sooper sekrit) or adding in text boxes and arrows to highlight the images for whatever I am going to post along with it.
So there may be quite reasonable reasons for the differences in your methods and mine. And again, that's a fair point. If you have a way of doing things that works for you, then by all means you should do that. Some folks do things differently and get just the same end results and that's what matters.
Can I ask if you have checked to see if your screenshots are the same resolution per the ini setting versus, say, changing the screen resolution in the Graphics Options and having the ini be changed based on that? That would be good to know as well.
best regards,
dno
