Improving Your Screen Shots (part 1)
Aug 20th, 2009 by pyra
Hello class, today we will talk about how to take better screenshots for posting on your blog.
Now, I come at this as a photographer, so in theory, I know a little bit about taking pictures.
The first thing to understand is this – different file types are designed for different things.
It is true, not all image types are intended, or best, for all types of images.
For starters, the .GIF is terrible for photos. It is. Thankfully, no one really uses them for photos anymore. What they are good for is line-art, comics, and yes, screenshots from video games. .GIF usually has really good results for game screenshots.
JPG is good for only photos. That is what is was created for. It sucks for in-game pictures. Stop using it already.
BMP is an uncompressed format. It takes a lossless image (depending on bit depth), but uses a lot of disk space. It also cannot be displayed natively in a web browser.
PNG is a compromise format. It handles both photos and line-art, but uses more space than either. A photo saved in jpeg will be smaller than a photo saved to PNG, but will have the same image quality. If you want proof, go see this link http://forums.ffxiclopedia.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=20490&start=15#p260848 . I posted a photo I made saved with different settings in photoshop as a jpeg as well as a png (the reason I am not reposting them here will be mentioned later). The PNG is more than double the size of the JPG, but equally represents the image I was trying to recreate.
However, for in-game screenshots, PNG is the easiest to work with. Since most blogs and forums do not get significant enough traffic, it will provide the best results. In other words, stop using JPG for screenshots.
That’s the first lesson.
The second is very simple – stop showing all of your Windower data on your images. That’s great, you can see all of the tp of your alliance and about how long until your buffs wear. Joy. IF you haven’t already, change this line in your init.txt
bind sysrq screenshot [file type]
to
bind sysrq screenshot png hide
Yeah, I’m saying to use PNG. Do it.
The third lesson is a bit more subtle. Resize your image.
That’s wonderful, you play at 1900×1200. I do too. If you post an image, I don’t need something huge.
If you pay attention, I generally resize everything to 500px wide max. It fits this theme well. Other themes may be more forgiving. My old theme would look good with a 600px wide image. Learn your theme, and resize nicely. If you really need to post a full-sized (or larger than 600px wide image), display a small version and link it to a bigger one.