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

[cindyanne1.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what it's called exactly. I got it from jaydee's website (linked to it... I think it's actually from MTS2) and it triggers a nightmare and turns off the sleeping Zzz's on sims.

Part of why screencapping takes so long for me is the way I do it, I'm sure. I've never been able to get any outside program (like SnagIt) to work worth a darn, and when I was doing the Castaway story I tried several. So I would end up using Alt-Prtsc, then going immediately into Paint, hitting "paste," cropping it to what I wanted it to be, resaving, etc... then going back into the game to get more pics. I don't mind doing it for contests and whatnot, but for storytelling I think that extra step would drive me around the twist (more so than usual, lol) ;)

And I'm also lazy when it comes to pics. My lack of background scenery should attest to that. :P

[sadieg79.livejournal.com]

The bonsai tree's actually from MATY. At least it was, depending on whether it was Pescado or Twojeffs that made it. If the latter, he's moved to Simbology.

I don't use the tree so much since Numenor (MTS2) made a global hack to get rid of the zzz's, but it's handy for when you want to give them nightmares ;)

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I'm not sure I have that, but I'll double check.

You know, I was never bothered by the zeds (I'm Canadian, a'right?) when they're sleeping, but sometimes they are annoying. Like the censor blur, I find them amusing in a cartoony way, but they tend to wear out their welcome. Also, the speech balloons do too. If I'm setting up a posed scene, I tend to use the showheadlines off cheat (and also plumbbobtoggle off). This saves me a lot of trouble.

[strange-tomato.livejournal.com]

I totally agree. I was using a program that exited the game every time I took a cap and it didn't take me long to throw my hands up and go back to the in-game camera. Irfanview just grabs them and saves them in a folder, much like the ingame camera, and the only extra work is cropping and saving them as a jpeg, which isn't so bad.

My one complaint is the lack of a camera sound. It doesn't have to sound like a camera shutter going off, but I want something to let me know the cap was taken. I should check to see if I can set it up that way. I need reassurance that it's working. *snicker*

You need to set up some home businesses in your hood to solve the decorating problem. I have a couple I play right now, and every time I enter a new lot, I check their inventory and find all their purchases from when they were non-playable. Just stick it on the walls, or around the room, and voila - instant decorating! :P