#screenshot tips

[sage-pages]

NEXUS MODS:

hello, ty to @lyra-prag for reminding me to share this information. I play the game on Steam, if you play on Epic yours might be a tad different

So, some of the Nexus Mods still work. At this point the majority have been converted over to curseforge and the in-game modding system, so their nexus variety are redundant. HOWEVER, some mods aren’t. I don’t personally use any cosmetic mods from Nexus, so I can’t say if they’ll work. But here is some information about what I know does work. (Information a lot of people have already, but this is for the newbies or anyone confused) PLEASE NOTE: nexus mods are not considered “official” and can cause your game to crash. Not everytime, but can happen

UETOOLS:

a Nexus Mod found here that makes cloning A LOT easier. There are loads of other uses for it too, I know there’s a list of commands in @miss--soapy’s discord server. Not sure if there’s anywhere else?

- a tutorial about using it to clone can be found by @girl-named-matty here and here

PATH: I've got mine in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Content\Paks

CONJURABLES:

aka the props you’ll see me using and crediting. These are Room of Requirement replacers and can be summoned using the conjuration spell. You'll then be able to select the item as an actor with Otis. It will show up as it's previous thing (eg Gothic Chair). But click 'is moveable' and away you go. These can be changed in size using the Actor Scale option

You’ll want to download Conjuration Everywhere, Unlock all Conjurations and, just to be safe, No Conjuration restrictions. Those can be found in the in game mod manager.

There are very few conjurations on Nexus and can instead be generally found on discord, as sometimes these are things that can’t go on Nexus. Talk to the modder whose mod you’re interested in.

PATH: Conjurations come in .pak files. You’ll want to download all three into C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Hogwarts Legacy\Phoenix\Content\Paks~mods. If you’re new and never used the old way of modding like me, you’ll likely need to create a ~mods folder. To delete, delete all three .pak files.

What I do is put the three .pak files into a folder. Name each folder with the modders name, what the conjuration is, what it replaces. I then put these folders into a bigger folder called ‘Conjuration Mods’ and then I just mix and match and move things in and out of my ~mods folder as needed

PLEASE NOTE: things that replace the same (eg standing banners) won’t work simultaneously and please check the chunk used. Please also check credit requirements from a modder.

Please ask if confused at all xxx

[moonpile]

If you ever see a Khajiit dressed like this, sleeping on the ground in weird places: it's probably me, taking screenshots 😹

I do this to get Khajiit's body out of the way because I almost always shoot in 3rd person – much more freedom of camera movement (with addons).

Always wonder if it's strange xD But nobody's said anything today; maybe it's an expected sight in Elsweyr ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[pictureamoebae]

your sims skin is so beautiful in game, how did you do that? mine looks very blurry ;-;

A few things might be in play here.

1 - I have ‘Uncompressed Sims Textures’ checked in the game’s graphics settings. Without that, the skin textures are compressed, which introduces visual artefacts.

2 - It depends on the skin you’re using. If you’re using a cc skin, perhaps it has more surface details than the one I’m using? 

3 - My ReShade preset might help even out the skin a little, although I don’t think this is necessarily the case.

4 - I use SRWE to hotsample my screenshots. That means I take screenshots at quite big sizes, so when they’re viewed on smaller screens there is more pixel information available to display and everything looks smoother and higher quality. I suspect this is the main reason. Most of my 16:9 screenshots are taken at either 5K or 6K resolution (and all my other screenshots in other aspect ratios use a similar resolution count). When you look at them on a 1080p monitor, or a 1440p monitor, they’ll look higher quality than something that was taken at 1080p or 1440p. The 6K ones will even look a bit better quality on a 4K monitor. And definitely, if you’re viewing any of these screenshots on a phone or tablet they’re going to look even better (everything looks better when it’s shrunk down).

[thatonebirbnerd]

The Guild Wars 2 Screenshot Master Post

Originally wrote this (the location list specifically) as a beefy Reddit comment cause I was bored. Bringing it to Tumblr for the benefit of the community here, with some bonus tips on how to take better screenshots! I am writing this as I spend two weeks away from my PC/GW2, so I could be missing things.

Taking Screenshots

If your PC can handle it, GW2 Hook/ReShade is always a boon, but it's by no means required. I use a preset called "oh shiny" that makes blacks darker, whites pop out more, edges sharper, and colors generally more vibrant. It's like GW2 Remastered - highly recommend it, but you might get addicted.

Shaders or not, lighting is a pretty crucial thing. Use the natural light, usually sunlight, to show off all the details of the outfit or armor. An inky mass or blinding glowy orb is not always that appealing. But I'll save the rant about Permafrost and Shadow Abyss, which only make the problem worse, for later. Night in GW2 is pretty lackluster in most places for screenshots, unless you are showing off things that glow in the dark, in which case IMO you're much more limited as to the places that will look best. For instance, the Grove and parts of Maguuma typically look nice at night.

Camera positioning tips:

You usually want to keep your FoV on the low side. Vary your pics between full-body, waist-up, etc.

Play around with vertical and horizontal position, as well as FoV, between pictures to add variety. These sliders can also help you capture skill animations and VFX that might be difficult to handle otherwise.

You can take close-up screenshots/headshots of your character by positioning them in front of a wall or other path-blocking object, then spinning the camera around so you can see your character's face. You want your FoV slider to be all the way down, and depending on race and pose of choice (emotes like /crossarms are fun) you will probably need to adjust vertical position (near). Back up from the obstruction as necessary if there is any clipping.

A Few Epic-Looking Skills to Start With

Elementalist - Tempest overloads, most Weaver dual attunement skills

Mesmer - Most autoattack chains

Necromancer - Reaper greatsword 2

Engineer - Holosmith skills and Photon Forge

Ranger - Longbow autoattack; snap a pic when the bow string and arrow are drawn back. Druid staff skills. Soulbeast merge stuff.

Thief - Dagger/dagger 3, pistol/pistol 3, staff and rifle skills

Guardian - Greatsword 2, DH longbow and F2, most Firebrand skills (including axe)

Revenant - Most skills look awesome

Warrior - Axe 5, most Berserker and Spellbreaker skills

My Favorite Places (and who I brought there)

(Feel free to contribute more!)

Kryta

Greatheart Weald, Queensdale - beautiful enchanted-looking autumnal forest. Make sure the corrupted oakheart is dead. (Meli)

Phinney Ridge, Queensdale - Just some nice sky lighting and open space. (Meli)

Forests in Lake Doric are generally really pretty. (Meli)

Divinity's Reach has a lot of good spots for slice-of-life pics. (Meli, Aloysia, Geanais)

Wynchona Woods, Harathi Hinterlands - nice trees. (Meli)

Mountainroot Lair, Harathi Hinterlands - splashes of pink and some really fun cave flora. (Meli)

Ascalon

Many spots around the Black Citadel are excellent for legionnaires. I've taken great pics of some of my charr all over the city, and I even brought my little mechanic asura to the molten scrapyard for a photo shoot. (Andromache, Medeia, Sarri)

Much of Fireheart Rise, especially the area around the Citadel of Flame - Even if your look isn't molten, sometimes you can use the scorched ground as an accent to go with skill VFX. (Andromache)

Open spots on the Plains of Ashford have really nice lighting. (Old iteration of Andromache; I also took some open space pics of her as a Rev that I did not keep.)

Hellion Forest, Iron Marches (Meli)

Anya's Strawberry Patch, Diessa Plateau

Shiverpeaks

Open ice areas in Wayfarer Foothills and Frostgorge Sound have good lighting for lighter-colored looks. (Eirwen, Geanais)

Drakkar Lake, Frostgorge Sound (Eirwen)

Dimotiki Waters, Frostgorge Sound - The prettiest underwater area in the game, short of perhaps Bitterfrost.

Naui Waters, Timberline Falls - It looks like Tahoe! (Meli)

Blizzard Basin/Hailstone Floe, Bitterfrost Frontier - amazing lighting on the ice that works best on lighter looks. (Eirwen)

Griffon Old Growth, Bitterfrost Frontier - uniquely pinkish light. (Geanais)

Tarnished Coast

Caledon Forest is always a great place to take a sylvari - loads of good spots including Astorea, the Verdence, Morgan's Spiral (as long as Risen aren't attacking), Briarthorn, and Hamlet of Annwen (as long as hylek aren't occupying). There's also the tengu wall as a backdrop for South or East Asian-inspired looks. (Jaya, Caerridwen, Elainyn, Siofra)

The Grove, just, all of it, especially at night. There are a couple spots where there are swarms of fireflies, and there's also the hidden Garden of Dawn which is a bit overused - but that's 'cause it's good! (Elainyn, Geanais)

Rata Sum has cute spots for asura slice-of-life pics. There are balconies on the lowest level with some nice sky views for both day and night. I haven't liked Metrica as much, though. (Ryxxi, Nexxa, Silaane)

Orr

(I haven't done a lot of pics here. Sorry.)

All six temples of the gods have some nice spots, if I recall correctly. Orr in general is just pretty nice for the right kind of look.

Pyrite Peninsula, Malchor's Leap - A gold-plated bright spot in the middle of zombie hell, and a place I don't see often enough in others' screenshots. (Eirwen)

Artesian Waters, Cursed Shore - The whole thing isn't accessible outside of a single story chapter and reforging Caladbolg; there are some nice spots in there though. (Caerridwen)

Maguuma

The oasis in Dry Top (Caerridwen)

Bongo's Bungalow, Verdant Brink - Lots of fun jungle props to play around with. (Ligeia)

On top of airship wreckages in Verdant Brink - the higher up the better; great sunlight. Best for the crash survivors. (Sarri)

Tarir and Exalted pylons, Auric Basin - Golden shinieeesssss. (Jaya, Lyri)

Morwood Wilds, Auric Basin - Extra wild and jungley. Cool green lighting. (Jaya; I coulda sworn I took pics of Lyri here but I may have replaced them.)

Burnished Quarry, Auric Basin - It's just pretty, ok?

Dragon's Stand north lane has some nice nooks and crannies; the whole area has cool ominous lighting. (Jaya, Eirwen)

Chak tunnels in both Tangled Depths and Dragon's Stand can look nice.

Rata Novus, Tangled Depths - cyber things for sci-fi looks. (Silaane)

Elona

A lot of the desert (including LS4 areas) just looks really good. Even the Desolation has great pic spots. Open sand in Crystal Desert looks especially good, as well as all the cities/towns/temples. I kinda have a weakness for the architecture... (Kyveli, Aanisa, Farhana, Tyra)

Sandstrewn Shrine, The Desolation - Ethereal white-blossomed trees and a very "clean" landscape. (Tyra)

Garden of Seborhin, Domain of Vabbi (Aanisa, Farhana, Tyra)

City of Lights above Desert Highlands - if you can get to this place at night, so worth.

Miscellaneous

Draconis Mons has really nice orange lighting and a natural setting. (Caerridwen)

Ember Bay has a pretty sweet lens flare. It's also orange but better for fiery looks.

Lion's Arch Aerodrome has interesting lighting and the area works well for steampunky looks. (Sarri)

The back side of the trading post in LA (blue tile wall), and the golden wall right inside the Black Lion Vaults, are amazing backdrops if you've got some camera position skills. (Aurea, older outfit for Tyra)

Other Game Modes

Edge of the Mists has some nice spots (temple ruins etc.) but beware of roamers. (Ryxxi)

The middle of Desert Borderlands is a Tarir-esque ruined temple. (Jaya, Lyri?)

The fractal lobby is pretty cool. Bonus points if you get action shots in the blue portal's VFX. (Ryxxi, Silaane)

Cleared raid instances are your friend, too! I have only really taken some nature-y pics in Salvation Pass, but if you wanted to take pics of a White Mantle cosplay there are ample spots for that in multiple wings. Mythwright Gambit is also downright gorgeous as a whole. (Ligeia - so far)

[sage-pages]

hi, how do you make the subtitles on your photos? I’d like to try

hi anon 😎

Let me tell you, right now

So, I use Canva! I do pay for Canva, but I’ve checked and everything I mention here should be on the free version!

Just upload your screenshots to a new project (I tend to do this with the photo editor option so the doc is the right size for the picture already) and then can edit them and add what you like. just make sure you’ve cropped all your images to the same size already because it’ll make your life a lot easier

I tried to make my captions look close to the game ones, but you can have fun with it and do what you like! @galaxiasgreen and her Screenies are a good example of this!

But me personally, I use the font Alike. It’s not spot on to what’s used in game, but I like how it looks. (Top one is game, bottom is mine) if you’re going for more accuracy, you’ll probably want to, at least, outline your font under ‘effects’

I then type what I want, centre it then add a black rectangle element behind it. I turn the transparency down to around 60% (but looking again now, I could go lower lmao)

Then, if you wanna go the extra mile, you can highlight just the name and add colour

Then just duplicate your page so your font stays the same size and it’s easier for you, and repeat the steps if there’s multiple pics!

In terms of font size and what not, I find it depends on the picture so I play around with it!

I hope that helps!!! Can’t wait to see more stuff!

[pictureamoebae]

hello there! im sorry if you've answered this before, but can i ask how you take vertical photos in TS4? thank you so much!

Hi there! I have answered it, but I’m always happy to again because it’s something I’d love more people to get use out of!

I use a program called SRWE (Simple Runtime Window Editor). It lets you change the dimensions (shape) and the size of the game window by typing in the resolution you want. So you can play in a square window, or a vertical (portrait) window, or an ultra-wide window, or anything in between. 

One really great thing about it is it lets you get really, really high quality screenshots. 

You can set up your screenshot in a square window, if that’s what you want, that is 1080x1080px, and once you’re happy with how it looks you can change that window to something much bigger (whatever your PC can handle), so, for example, 3000x3000 or 4000x4000 (or bigger! the sky’s the limit if you have a super-powerful PC). 

Once the window has resized to that really large size you won’t be able to see all the screen, but you can go ahead and take your screenshot and then size the window back down again, and the screenshot you’re left with in your screenshot folder will be that larger size, which will look so much better than a regular sized one. This is called hotsampling. It’s similar to downsampling, but more flexible.

Here’s a comparison I made recently in TS4. The original shot was taken at 1080x1440px (I resized it to fit on the screen on the comparison website). If you hover your mouse over the picture, you’ll see the hotsampled shot, which I took at 3600x4800px. Pay particular attention to things like the fence and fence shadow on the left and flip between the two pictures. You can see how much better the larger picture looks. That’s because there is so much more pixel information rendered at the larger size.

If you want to see any more comparisons let me know. I always take a small shot before I take my large shot, but I don’t tend to keep the small shot unless I think I might want to use it in a post like this in the future. But I can always take more on purpose if you want!

I wrote a full tutorial on how to use SRWE. It uses Mass Effect Andromeda as its example, but the steps are exactly the same to use it with TS4. You don’t have to use it to hotsample to larger sizes if you don’t want to, and can just use it to take pictures in different dimensions. It’s up to you!

[pictureamoebae]

hiiii ,Im sorry about my bad english but i really want to know how can your pictures in the sims 4 is so smooth and beautiful. The color looks so warm and really great. I know its edited. Did you use mod or something ? Like Reshade ? If yes, can you show me your setting ?Can you show me some tricks about taking pictures in sims 4 ? i would really appreciate it. Thank you ❤

Hi there, anon. You have very kind words about my pictures, thank you.

I don’t usually edit my screenshots. Everything you see (apart from my recent faceapp smiles!) is done in the game.

First, I have all the in-game graphics set to the highest they’ll go, except for Edge Smoothing, which I keep switched off (so that ReShade will work correctly).

Second, in the graphicsrules.sgr file I have shadow quality set to 4096 (which is higher than it can go in the in-game graphics settings), and I have object textures set to the same. I don’t change any cas textures any larger because it causes graphical errors if you have some textures installed that are smaller than that, and I use a mixture of textures that come in different sizes.

Third, I use ReShade. Most of my pictures for the last year or so have been using my own Hazy Days and Blueberryade preset, which I tweak quite a bit on a per-shot basis to get the look I want. A couple of my most recent pictures have shown a work in progress preset I’m trying out that I hope to eventually release.

Fourth, I use a program called SRWE to hotsample my pictures. Hotsampling means I set up a screenshot, then I use SRWE to change the size of the game window to be a lot larger than fits on my monitor, I take the screenshot, then I change the window size back down to normal again. The screenshot I’m left with is very big, and as a result has a lot more pixel information than a regular screenshot. This means that when I or you or anyone else views that screenshot on a regular monitor it looks a lot smoother and less jagged than it would had it been taken at a smaller size. You can read a tutorial on how to use SRWE here.

As for tips and tricks, other than what I’ve already said, in terms of composition or getting the best out of a scene the single most important thing you can do, in my opinion, is to think about the lighting. This is particularly important for interior shots where you have the most control over it. I’d also recommend taking your time with composition. I don’t always do this myself, and am frequently unhappy with a lot of my shots as a result, but slowing down and moving the camera around and changing angles and field of view (which can be controlled by zooming in or out) until you hit on that perfect framing can make the difference between a mediocre shot and a really lovely shot.

If you need any help with ReShade or SRWE or anything else you think I might be able to help with just let me know!