#screenshot faq

[pictureamoebae]

hii me again!! i sent an ask about a relight issue (ive downloaded lighty lights for now and scrapped relight), ive just gotten otis’ camera tools for the hot sampling and it works for a lil bit and then starts crashing my bg3 game (im even only upscaling 1.25x or 1.5x of my native resolution)

i have a predator helios neo 16 laptop w rtx 4070 and 1tb ssd where the camera tools are stored and then an extra samsung 990 pro m.2 internal ssd at 2tb where bg3 is installed, do you or anyone else that follows you and sees this know if it’s my laptop that cant handle hot sampling and what id need to possibly upgrade in the future for it to work, or if its a bg3 issue??

sorry for the long ask, im mildly good w tech but this side goes a bit over my head and you’re currently the only account i know that might be able to help or know/have a follower who knows how to thank :’) thank you in advance!!

That gpu should be fine, I used to play BG3 with a 980ti and hotsampled with no problems. I would double check though to make sure the game is using your 4070 and not the integrated gpu by accident.

As to why it’s crashing, I’m afraid I don’t know. I’d suggest asking Otis over in his discord server. He’s the one best placed to be able to diagnose it.

[pictureamoebae]

Some before/after shots from BG3. I'm always impressed by what you can achieve in ReShade. I take before shots alongside every single screenshot I take out of curiosity, I figured I might as well make use of some of them. L = without ReShade; R = with ReShade

If you click the following links you can use a slider to go back and forth between the before/after shots to compare them more directly:

Wyll - https://imgsli.com/MjExNTM4

Jaheira - https://imgsli.com/MjExNTM5

I've been using a lot of premium shaders recently. Are they worth it? Not for everyone, definitely not. But for me, yes they are. I use ReGrade, ReLight and RTGI by Marty McFly, and all of them have changed how I use ReShade, and improved what I'm able to do. In particular ReLight is capable of adding so much drama to a scene (it's a little like Nice Guy Lamps, but more powerful, easier to use, and more polished).

Should you sub to get them? If you just like using ready-made presets for gameplay, or to take regular story screenshots etc then no, probably not. If you're heavily into tweaking ReShade yourself, either to make your own presets or on a shot-by-shot basis to get the very best pictures you can, well that's up to you but I don't regret paying for them. It depends how seriously you take it all. I think of it like this: when I was into photography I spent real cash money on cameras and on film; when I was into art I spent real cash money on materials; now I'm into virtual photography I'm prepared to spend money on tools that can help me.

I'll keep posting the odd before/after shot. I always have the befores knocking around, I just usually chuck them in the bin as soon as I've posted the after. Just like I always take a native resolution shot before I take a hotsampled shot, I get a kick out of comparing them.

[pictureamoebae]

hi! sorry if this is a silly question, when i you use SWRE for sims 4 screenshots it makes the file size huge and i can’t upload it to places like tumblr. what do you use to compress your image size? i tried a website i found but it made the colours look awful! :(

You don't want to compress it, you want to resize it. Keep the original, but resize it to upload. You can do that in any image editor. I resize to dimensions that fit on my monitor.

I keep all the originals (I have hundreds of gigs of screenshots now) and upload them to flickr. If I have more than one shot to resize at a time, I use FastStone to resize them in one go. It makes it really quick and easy. Just point it at the folder where the screenshots are, select the ones you want to resize, set up the size you want, the image type, and where you want to save it to. I choose Lanczos3 as my method for resizing (Lanczos2 is too sharp imo because many platforms apply their own sharpening algorithm when you upload things, and it ends up looking awful).

[pictureamoebae]

how can you take high resolution screenshots of sims 4? any tips?

SRWE!

It stands for Simple Runtime Windows Editor and it's a small, lightweight program that lets you increase the size of your game window (as well as its aspect ratio) for the time it takes to take a screenshot. That means you can get really big screenshots that look so much better when viewed on your regular monitor because there's a lot more pixel information included.

I wrote a tutorial some years ago about how to use it. It's really simple, you should give it a go!

[pictureamoebae]

Hey I love ALL your cyberpunk2077 screenshots! Are you playing in 4k? I recently upgraded my monitor to an LG 27GP850 one and I have a rtx 3070 gpu. I also got back into cp2077 and the phantom liberty expansion but when I try and play in 2k, a lot of times the frame rate drops and everything becomes laggy and jittery. When I dial down the resolution to 1920x1080 again, everything runs perfectly smooth. Do you have any tips for me as to what settings I need to have or what I need to change to play in 2k and not have a laggy game? Would reshade help or make it worse? I appreciate your time and answer! Much love xx

Hi anon! I have a 2560x1440 monitor, that’s what I play in. I have all settings maxed out and have dlss on quality. My fps is smooth and consistent, but I recently got a new pc that can handle it.

I hotsample my screenshots. Otis_inf (Frans Bouma) makes camera tools for games, and he made one for Cyberpunk. I use that in addition to the game’s photomode, and among other things it allows you to hotsample.

Hotsampling means you can freely change the size and shape of the game window. So, I can compose a shot in a 1440x1440 window, then when I’m ready to take it I can make the window temporarily even bigger, say to 4500x4500, take the shot, and then make the window smaller again. That results in a high quality screenshot, without having to suffer performance problems from playing at higher resolutions, and with the added bonus that I can change the aspect ratio too.

Otis’ camera tools require subbing to his patreon but imo it’s worth it if you’re likely to want that type of screenshot capability across a few games.

[pictureamoebae]

Replying to an ask like this because the mobile app borked.

[pictureamoebae]

hi! what size do you set your bg3 pictures to, to look good on tumblr? i feel like tumblr destroys my quality a bit.. and also when hotsampling, what resolution do you hatsample to? thank you!

Hi anon!

I hotsample to whatever my PC can handle, which admittedly isn't particularly huge at the moment (I'm still putting off ordering my new PC, it will happen this month, I promise!).

For uploading to tumblr I resize to whatever fits on my monitor. So for a landscape orientation it'll be maximum 2560px across, and for a portrait orientation it'll be a maximum of 1440px tall. I think I fudge those numbers a bit for square shots, I can't remember off the top of my head, I think I go for 1920px for those, I can't remember why.

There used to be posts knocking around with dimensions for tumblr picture sets, but I always ignored those because they were ridiculously small and meant you could never see a picture at a decent size when clicking on it to enlarge in the lightbox. I never encountered any problems by ignoring it.

[pictureamoebae]

hiii! hope you're doing well today! I had a quick question about hot sampling while taking screenshots in bg3 with reshade. for some reason, no matter what resolution i set it at, when i go to take the screenshot with my usual reshade screenshot key, it just sets it back to the resolution of my monitor. i don't know if maybe i'm just dumb and missing something or doing something wrong but i cannot figure it out. pls help :'(

Hi anon! Are you playing the game in windowed mode? If not, make sure you do. The resolution stuff won't work otherwise.

Also double check if it's possible to set hotkeys for resolution in the BG3 tools. I can't remember if it is or not. If it is, it might be that you've got the same key set for that and for your screenshots. That's an easy fix, just change the key for one of them!