Pro-Tip: Screenshotting

I've seen some of you guys post these amazing looking screenshots and for the life of me I can never get mine to look nearly as good.

What're some suggestions you can give to the community to enhance their screenshots?

Anything. Locations, poses, times of the (Eorzean) day, photo editing software, whatever.

I'm looking for help getting nice shots of my character playing Bard songs, but I always have a problem timing it right because the screen capture feature seems to only let you grab a certain amount of shots within a given time frame. (Or is that just me?)

My pro-tip: Pressing the Pause/Break key will have your character face the camera. I'm well aware the majority of the community knew this already but I've been playing this game since 1.0 beta and I just found that out a couple of months ago. Just throwing this out there on the off chance someone else didn't know this. I accidentally hit the key while taking some shots and it blew my mind lol

some of the better quality screen shots I've seen have been Photoshopped for lighting and color.

SweetFX makes my screenies pretty...

Main thing is using SweetFX which really enhances the lighting and colour and removes the grey scale aspect of it.

The other important thing to keep in mind, is composition rules. Taking screenshots are much like taking photos. Following some simple rules really enhances the pictures.

For example:

http://i58.tinypic.com/2z6doqg.png

Framing the picture on the sides just makes it look... nicer. It fits well, meshes together.

http://i58.tinypic.com/f1e0qo.png

This one here, again. By framing the lower part of the picture, you're creating layers within the picture. It gives it more depth, you see?

The obvious answer to top of the line screenshots, is to not only use a cellphone for it, but to rotate it slightly and to stand at the side of the screen when you do it.

Supersampling does wonders for screenshots if your video card can handle it. Otherwise it's mostly people touching the picture up in post, toying with saturation levels and what not.
http://images.bluegartr.com/bucket/g...c5bdb5d95b.jpg

Another tip is using the grid rule. Don't put your subject/main focus in the dead centre of the image. Divide the screen by 2x imaginary lines (vertical and horizontal) then put the points of interest where those lines meet.

http://designmodo.com/wp-content/upl...2/10/focus.jpg

Jeckyl's shots are a good example of that.


1st picture - The larger, lit flowers land on the bottom left intersection, while the tall mountain is in the upper right.
In the 2nd picture - The position of the character, the 2x corners sections of the "arc" in the wall, and the tall mountain to the left - all land on or near these imaginary intersections.

Is it sad I just found out about the Pause Break thing?

I've been abusing the look at camera feature since it was patched in. I switched it to Home, since Pause|Break is the SweetFX update key (default, anyways, and there's no reason to change it like most any other hotkey)

I started using SweetFX again a couple months ago (It stopped working with either GeForce Experience or one of the graphics card patches and I never set it back up) and I am mindblown by the fact that I managed to go two months without it. The world is so bland without it.

I'm not a scenery screenshot taker, I mostly just take pictures of my character and make scenery gifs.

Anyways, SweetFX is the best. You can set it up any way you want - bright and colorful, dark and gloomy, sharp and realistic, just a touch up, whatever. So I really recommend it if you're on PC and your graphics card can handle it. It will immensely improve your screenshots. Plus, if you do it right, you might never need to edit your screenies. :P