To screencap or not to screencap...

[strangetomato]

Okay, I've made up my mind. I'm switching to screencapping my images.

Yes, that's right... stubborn old me, who has repeatedly said she couldn't be arsed to go through all that trouble, has now decided that it's worth the trouble. Now that I've been taking screencaps with IrfanView and playing around with them in Photoshop, I see the potential. I couldn't really work with the caps the same way with GIMP, and I'm really liking the results. It's a little more work, but I think it's probably worth the extra effort.








Here's a scene taken with the in-game camera. I have to guess at the framing, because of my widescreen monitor format, and it's not very precise, even though I'm pretty good at it by this point.

There's also the typical jpeg compression happening, which is not extremely noticeable with these colours, and because my graphics are good, but it's still visible.




Here's the same scene, screencapped, and saved as a jpeg at the highest quality level. It's much more crisp, but not annoyingly sharp (I hate oversharpened images). The fact that I have the widescreen shot to resize and move around in the 600x450 window gives me an extra opportunity to fine tune the framing too, resulting in a better composition.

That last part is key. I could live with the slight compression, for the ease of it, though I have to admit that it really bothers me lately. It's one of those things that, once noticed, is impossible to ignore.

This was the shot that convinced me:




Red is by far the worst colour for showing the "dirt" from the compression. See how noticeable it is around the edges of things? (Yeah, that's right. Get in there and get a good look at those sim butts.)

I know that not everyone cares about such fine details, but I'm joining the ranks of those sim image creators that do. Content and composition are still way more important to me than surface detail, but if I can make the surface nicer with just a little extra effort, then why not, right?



 

Comments

[hannahspring.livejournal.com]

Can you, please, tell me how the screencapping works? I HATE when the game compresses the pictures and because my graphics card isn't very good (you're very lucky to have a good one), the compression is even worse. But the game itself doesn't really look that bad.

The pictures can be very annoying when making a story. I've been writing a story and posting it at S2C but because of lack of time I've stopped. I think I'd like to finish it (the sooner the better) because I hate when I leave things half-done and actually, one of the things that keep me away from the story are the pictures - as I said, the compression is really bad. :(

[cindyanne1.livejournal.com]

It's amazing the difference screencapping makes. But oye... every time I've tried to do it (remember the Castaways story?) it was so time consuming! I wish I had the time to devote to it but I just don't. :( Sigh.

Oh hey... remember back when we were trying to figure out what was interfering with the morning cuddle? Well, someone replied to my old thread and suggested it might be the movie maker bonsai tree, which I do have in my game. Not sure if you have it in yours or not. Just thought I'd pass that tidbit along... :D

[xel-squirgle-ox.livejournal.com]

...I honestly cannot see a difference. Do whatever you want, as long as you're happy. Though I don't think it'll matter much to your readers!

Personally, I'm perfectly happy with just taking my pictures in-game. With screencapping, you have to figure out what to crop and that would really bother me because I've finally gotten the hang of having the camera take it at the right angles and centering it perfectly within the size limitations of the frames, etc.

Okay, so I'm also extremely lazy, but that's besides the point. :P

[lesimnoir.livejournal.com]

Not that I had a problem with your images before, but I definitely see why you're changing your methods. If I had a better graphics card/monitor, that red would bug me too!

I can't believe you'd been using the in-game camera: all of the images still looked so crisp. The pictures I get out of that thing are unusable.

[smjoshsims.livejournal.com]

Huzzah! You've joined us!

ut, to be honest, I don't find it to be that much work. I use SagIt, which I did pay for, but if you have Photoshop you'll be able to use the same features I do- I Batch Process them to change the name, trim out 150 pixels on each side (I like to center my images, if an image is off center I remove it from the process and resize it myself) and then resize them to 600x___ or 500x___ for Legacy updates.

And I didn't notice any compression in your picture of Frances. (But we both know I'm not at noticing those little details.)

[leskuh.livejournal.com]

The screencapped ones look amazing. Your regular ones are actually pretty good too, but I can definitely tell the difference.

<3

[(Anonymous)]

If you are screencapping sims stuff, you NEED Gadwin Printscreen (http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/). At least, I do. I can't stand the whole cap, exit, paste into image viewer thing - with Gadwin Printscreen you just cap, cap, cap, and keep on playing, and everything saves itself without you having to do anything. Sorry if I sound like a shill here, but it really saves my sanity. Also, it's free.

[tanathir.livejournal.com]

This has lots of potential. Your pictures are always great, so I can hardly imagine they would get any better. :D Irfanview refuses to work for me -- it never saves my caps -- so I'm content with the ingame camera, but...yeah. By the way, I love the pic of Frances and Beau kissing under the mistletoe. So squeeworthy!

[orikes13.livejournal.com]

Ultimately, I think the jpg compression issues are only something you are going to notice. Most people wouldn't even realize there's a difference and most of the rest would only notice if they got in there really close and look with wrinkled up nose and squinting eyes. The rest either don't care or probably wouldn't be reading the story anyway. :)

I think what it comes down to is what's going to make things easier for you. If you've got framing/cropping issues with playing on a widescreen monitor, then I think using a screencap program is definitely the way to go. I know with my CRT monitor, I only need to be careful about the very top or very bottom of the picture and it's easy to compensate for.

I have thought about switching to a screencap program just to have the larger pictures to work with, but since I post my story on the exchange, it doesn't matter in the long run.

[catladymeow.livejournal.com]

Your pictures have always looked great to me, and I am sure this will make them look even better. I am glad you are enjoying the process.

[showercapfrog.livejournal.com]

Gadwin is great for the reasons that people have mentioned, but it also has the option of having alerts every time you take a picture (which is great for me because I'm forgetful). I assume irfanview probably would have that option too, which could help you?