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Instructor
Original Poster
#1 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 1:33 PM
Thoughts on Screenshots?
Do you take screenshots while playing? Why or why not?

What do you do with the screenshots afterwards?

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Theorist
#2 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 2:08 PM
Heya, Butterbot.

Sometimes when I am looking at something funny or interesting to me for some reason then yes, I take screenshots. I keep them in a separate folder. If it's something I know I want to share right away with some forum friends (not this one but sometimes I share a few here, too) I will upload them and create a post to share. I never bother doctoring my screenshots with editing software though. That feels like cheating to me, haha. Then again, I don't use pose player poses to make it look like sims can do stuff that they can't do in game. We always got enough of that in EA's trailers.

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Field Researcher
#3 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 2:09 PM
I do make ingame screenshots. Mostly funny situations and (lagecy) challenges. A lot end up in the trash, some i post to MTS. I'm always planning to start a blog/website for storytelling purposes but english is not my native language. A pity because i love to tell a funny or dramatic story.

Happy-Go-Lucky
Field Researcher
#4 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 2:11 PM
I take waaay too many screenshots, and i don't know why: compulsive screenshooting! I post some of them over at my deviantart page.
Lab Assistant
#5 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 3:12 PM
I do take a few screenshots sometimes, usually when something funny or weird happens. And then I forget about them, so I never get around to sharing them or anything xD
Site Helper
#6 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 3:57 PM
I take screenshots if I'm trying to write a story, or if something cute happens, or if I'm practicing, or just because I feel like it.
Then they end up being moved to a folder in Pictures where I have subfolders so I don't end up with any more named something like Screenshot 1(27).

I am Ghost. My husband is sidneydoj. I post, he downloads, and I wanted to keep my post count.
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Alchemist
#7 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 6:30 PM
I take ~20 screenshots per generation now, and only of moments that are more unusual. Sometimes I like to take one photo of every sim in the family at every age stage and compare them, too. But overall I prefer screenshots where sims are doing a couple or group activity, and never take photos of them in that blank idle state.

Here's the most recent screenshot I'm happy with: Cadwgan (fairy), his brother Breanainn (there's an accent on the 'e' but for some reason it showed up broken) and wife Wu, enjoying a meal together:



And a previous one, with the two brothers and their father, Christopher (left), having mixed reactions towards the Sports channel


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Lab Assistant
#8 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 7:43 PM
Oh, boy. Thousands upon thousands.

Screenshots are how I remember my playtime, and how I develop the 'stories' of my sims. By a quick count I have about 13000 shots on this particular computer, and I think there's about 3000 more on an external drive somewhere. And that count is only from the last few years, a time I haven't been playing quite as much as before. I had a different drive with all my shots since 2009. I'm guessing around 50,000, give or take ten thousand. It's one of the main advantages TS3 has over TS2 for me; the native screenshots from TS2 produces poor, borderline useless, shots and I don't feel like messing with an outside program. But the shots for TS3 come out beautifully. Hey, if you have the room for them, then why not take as many shots as you can? When I don't feel like loading up the game, I can just open up my screenshots folder and relive the memories, get inspired to play a family I haven't touched in a while, or just remember how fun the game can be. And I couldn't possibly remember the little details about an heir from three generations without all those screenshots.

Unfortunately, my master drive with the ~50,000 pics died last summer, and I lost everything on it. Hence why I haven't had as much motivation to play for a while now.
#9 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 8:17 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Spamaccount
Unfortunately, my master drive with the ~50,000 pics died last summer, and I lost everything on it. Hence why I haven't had as much motivation to play for a while now.


That's...that's a world record.

Literally. The current record is 17k.

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Forum Resident
#10 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 9:03 PM Last edited by Deshong : 1st May 2017 at 4:47 PM.
I have over twenty-two thousand screenshots. My enjoyment of taking screenshots goes way back to TS (2000) for the purpose of documenting and keeping track of what happens in my Sim's life. I like the storytelling aspect and loved the in-game albums of TS and TS2. It's also nice to go back and look at screenshots I took years ago. Other reasons, I like the facial expressions/body language, overall scene to keep a memory of. And of course, keeping track of the generations.


Most pictures are of gameplay while some are posed for the purpose of fashion, portraits, something special that references an in-game event, etc.

Some examples.
Mad Poster
#11 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 9:18 PM
In TS3 (and TS4) I only take screenshots if something interesting happens in my game. I save them for my own enjoyment, and occasionally post them on forums.

In TS2 I rarely have a play session without doing screenshots, either for stories or because I'm planning to post something on forums, or because I need a picture of something ingame, like a CC item that needs adjustments. For stories and posting, I edit the ones I plan to post, and keep most of the others. Pictures I don't intend to keep end up in the trash.
Scholar
#12 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 10:57 PM Last edited by Elynda : 26th Apr 2017 at 11:20 PM.
I never used to take many screenshots, but I do now for storytelling purposes. I will sometimes take around four hundred shots for a chapter and end up using about forty of them. The rest, except for total rejects, go onto my external drive, in case I ever need them. I do use poses, but only when absolutely necessary: if I can get my characters in just the right position and looking like they're saying what I want them to be saying, then I go with that. I try to use interesting camera angles too, and line up shots so that they have interesting backgrounds. In fact, I think that that trying to properly compose shots in-game has taught me a lot about taking real life photographs.

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Instructor
Original Poster
#13 Old 26th Apr 2017 at 11:42 PM Last edited by Butterbot : 26th Apr 2017 at 11:44 PM. Reason: Typo
Wow, there are some seriously large screenshot collections! I really enjoy looking through gameplay screenshots people post online, but am reluctant to blog them myself since it seems to be quite a commitment--and since I don't have a concrete use for the images, I hesitate to take screenshots for fear of accumulating a pile of pics and wondering what to do with them. But then I look at other people's pictures and am tempted again.

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Site Helper
#14 Old 27th Apr 2017 at 12:02 AM
Quote: Originally posted by BlackjackGabbiani
That's...that's a world record.

Literally. The current record is 17k.

You can do it! Build it up again! You stacked that wall once, you can do it again!


Umm... the total of all my Sims 3 Screenshot folders comes out to 419.53 MB. And counting.

I am Ghost. My husband is sidneydoj. I post, he downloads, and I wanted to keep my post count.
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Mad Poster
#15 Old 27th Apr 2017 at 12:16 AM
I have taken almost 30000 of my legacy family alone. So add all the ones of hoods and lots and worlds and, and, and...... and I dare not think of the number. I take them constantly.
Mad Poster
#17 Old 27th Apr 2017 at 12:01 PM
I CAN'T PLAY without taking screenshots. I probably take well over a thousand screenshots for every 24 SimHours. And that's kind of a problem now that I use ReShade and therefore also need to use Fraps, because these ones are like 5 megs each.

insert signature here
( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
Virtual gardener
staff: administrator
#18 Old 27th Apr 2017 at 12:37 PM
Although all the images you guys are posting is amazing, please keep it to 4 images max ^-^

Grijzepillion- Lol I know right? reshade just makes even looking at a microwave or something totally uninteresting, interesting. I guess it's also a pretty nice practice material whenever you're new to editing stuff in PS. I remember using images straight from the game just to figure out how to strange thing called Photoshop worked. I usually take tons of images, especially when things go all weird and uhm... it's what simblrs do right? Taking tons of images of either the scenery or your sim. If not, gameplay related stuff or bugs showing up which are quite funny to look at like changing an adult sim into a child sim. :P
Scholar
#19 Old 27th Apr 2017 at 1:34 PM
Being a storyteller, I take loads of screenshots. I don't edit them apart from resizing, because a) I'm too lazy and b) I don't really know how. But I still like the way they look.



An old example.



I'm a sucker for the odd landscape shot too.
Virtual gardener
staff: administrator
#20 Old 27th Apr 2017 at 1:43 PM
Haha you watched his tutorials too? I still go back to his channel frequently just to find out how to do stuff if I can't figure it out myself. I used to feel all professional when I would show people like these 'Hard to accomplish-looking images but really isn't' But yeah! They do pretty much work on the sims. I guess a way to proof it is just google the sims 3 tumblr and you'd get these really heavily-photoshopped sims
Theorist
#21 Old 27th Apr 2017 at 1:44 PM
I dont take many pics. I should though.

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Scholar
#22 Old 27th Apr 2017 at 1:48 PM
I find Photoshop useful in various ways. For example, if I've taken what otherwise is the perfect shot but there is some little detail in it that shouldn't be there, then the cloning tool is very useful. Or getting rid of those dotted lines that sometimes appear at the edge of lots. Also, the lighting can change noticeably during a 'shoot' so I sometimes use Photoshop to adjust some shots so that they better match up.

Legend is history as we would like it to be. We pick through the dusts of time for what is worth keeping and, here and there, we occasionally find treasure.

Simblr: Elyndaworld *** Wordpress: Tales of Nantrelor
Mad Poster
#23 Old 27th Apr 2017 at 4:01 PM
For someone who is so into graphic design, I suppose it's pretty weird that I use GIMP instead of Photoshop. I'm at a point where I've more or less exhausted the tools of GIMP, and where I can't use it to achieve certain effects even with the full extent of my creativity. And in some ways it's just plain clunky. Working with channels takes more effort than it should, and the options for working with text and shapes are very limited. So I'll definitely look into Photoshop soon, because I can't say no to tools that do more with less effort.

And by the way - as much as ReShade is a tool that replaces manual color correction et cetera in most cases, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution, and it can't do depth of field and ambient occlusion simultaneously. So despite all it does, I still regularly have to fuck around with depth buffers and image compositing in GIMP. Not that there's anything wrong with deciding what it'll look like by yourself.

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( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
Mad Poster
#24 Old 28th Apr 2017 at 12:55 AM Last edited by GrijzePilion : 28th Apr 2017 at 1:19 AM.
Quote: Originally posted by Gargoyle Cat
Yes, there are heavily- photoshopped sim pictures around. The odd ones I find funny are the ones where solar flares are added where there is no sun or excessive blurring where there shouldn't be blur. I digress.

Things like depth of field and flares are really hard to fake, so it's going to look wrong 99% of the time. When you use ReShade, all these effects are essentially real. They'll look better than an hour's worth of Photoshop work, but they'll be rendered live.
From a purely statistical standpoint, I think it's the best thing that could ever happen to screenshot addicts. 95 out of 100 screenshots that you would originally have wanted to edit yourself, already have the desired look. But you'll also get everything else, that you never planned on touching up, postprocessed as well.
The biggest argument against it, I would argue, is that the added effects may sometimes do the opposite and make your screenshot look less like it should. Reflective bump mapping, for example, can't determine the specularity of surfaces. It just makes everything equally reflective when observed under a sharp angle, regardless of colour, shape or texture. So while it's great for roads, flooring, walls, that sort of stuff, but it'll also turn your lawn into a mirror and it'll really mess up any nearby trees. And things like that are why I edit my screenshots more often now than I used to - because there's much more that can go wrong with them.

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( Join my dumb Discord server if you're into the whole procrastination thing. But like, maybe tomorrow. )
dodgy builder
#25 Old 28th Apr 2017 at 1:30 PM
I make thousands of screenshots and upload to Flickr. I have like 20k shots there now. I have way more though, and old shots just follows old computers.
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