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Taking good screenshots & using images creatively

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General tips:

  • Use the highest graphics setting you can.  Even if it’s just for the duration of the screenshot.
    • Anti-aliasing can make a huge difference to the quality, especially for characters’ faces.
  • Get rid of your UI (F10 or F12 are popular default UI toggles, you can usually bind this toggle to a key of your own choosing)
  • Take some time to compose the shot
    • can you get a better angle or view elsewhere on the map?
    • does it look better with your character or without? (first or third person view)
    • how about the time of day? weather?
    • where is the focal point? quite often the focal point looks best in the centre, but you can get some interesting shots if it’s not.
    • Move your camera – zoom in, zoom out, left, right, above, below – try standing on some rocks, or crouching.
    • if it’s a character shot – try an emote
    • action/combat shots are harder – don’t be afraid to spam the screenshot key so you can pick the best result.
  • Conversely, sometimes you need to be quick (light in lotro for example, changes very quickly).  Take a quick shot, change your view / location / pose and take shots as you are adjusting.
  • Take more screenshots then you think you’ll need – characters have a horrible habit of blinking at the wrong time ;)
  • Crop the image, if necessary, to get rid of any annoying clutter
  • Taking stills from video can also get good results

Using images in a post:

screenshot00368-e1357409863114

thumbnail image

WordPress (but I’m sure other blogging platforms will have similar) has quite a few ways in which you can use images.  Inserting a picture straight into a post as a thumbail, medium or large image.  They are fairly straightforward.  The final image size will also depend upon your theme, but when clicked the image page will show the original image and size.  When using a thumbnail, if you align the image, the text will wrap.

WordPress also do rather nice galleries – with a choice of layout.  Choose the best layout for your post.  Here is the same gallery but with two different layouts.

screenshot00460 screenshot00475 ScreenShot00181 2014-03-06_00002 eso ghost ship

 

screenshot00460 screenshot00475 ScreenShot00181 2014-03-06_00002 eso ghost ship

Try combining images (I use Photoscape but I’m sure there are other programs around)

fire-flinging

or adding speech bubbles

lore-master-doh

or a panorama – see this guide for screenshots & Hugin I wrote.

eso pan 3

I hope this helps :) any questions? I’ll try my best to answer



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