colorlessrainbow Posted June 2, 2020 Share Posted June 2, 2020 (edited) Screenshotting 101 This guide isn’t about how to properly edit screenshots with a software. It’s quite easy in 2020, but if you’re lost, be sure to check out Screenshot Guide (Elite) by @Declan. This guide will be about what’s generally acceptable and unacceptable and what looks good and bad. The guide itself is written by Douglas_Nyswonger and I take no credit for the contents — I merely polished it, reformatted it and removed/reworded faction (or game engine) specific parts. It’s strongly recommended however to review these few points before posting screenshots. 1. Posting quality screenshots Be minimalistic. You don’t have to add ten layers of brushes, effects and all that for your screenshots to look good. Find the perfect angle and add some well-arranged text to it. That’s the trick. Always make sure your text is readable if you include it. Don't scale down the text of your screenshots too much, to the point where it's too tiny to read. Don't butcher your text's outlines or colors, to the point where you can barely see it. The text is the most important part of the picture. Unless you're going for some try-hard blurry distorted picture quality for some reason, you would want your pictures to be crystal clear. If they're low in quality or are blurry around the text, it may be because your software lowers their quality or the image site you upload them to does it. For example, if you upload big pictures to a site like Imgur as an unregistered member, their quality gets decreased. If you save your pictures as JPG instead of PNG on some versions of Windows Paint, their quality gets decreased. You can work around these problems if you want your picture quality to be better. 2. Arrangement of text Be sure to arrange the text properly. Emotes, what the characters say and transactions. You shouldn’t have advertisements, admin messages, private messages, ooc messages etc in your screenshots — they look out of place and should not be shown. Limit your script messages. Don’t add ten green messages stating that you gave some items to someone. It’s clumsy, makes your screenshot boring. Have an emote instead describing the contents being passed over. Show and don't tell — give a gist of what's going on, but don't go crazy with the amount of text you put on. 3. Irrelevant roleplay in screenshots Make sure that your screenshots relate to the core of your roleplay, or what you try to portray. Post screenshots which showcase your character appropriately. Crop out irrelevant lines which aren’t relevant to the scene you’re showing off at all. 4. Blank screenshots Don’t post screenshots with no text present without a strong purpose. That purpose can be anything from showcasing the cool factor, or being self-explanatory where text isn’t necessary.Otherwise, they’re useless and just there to boost your post count with filler material. Don’t post a picture of your character sitting on a bench. Don’t show a picture of your character standing next to a random person. It can pop up sometimes, but for the most part you should be aiming for something different and more meaningful — always aim to showcase dialogues and actions in your screenshots. 5. Solo roleplay Pictures of roleplaying alone should only be posted if they have a purpose. Usually this purpose is related to a previous scenario. Nobody wants to read about a guy arguing with his NPC mother in a block of text or a guy driving around the city alone. That has no purpose. 6. No metagame-worthy screenshots Your character talked shit about their buddy? Great. Keep it to yourself. Making a screenshot out of it will do more harm than good — it’ll only incite the person to metagame that. You’re planning to hit a rival faction tomorrow? Don’t post a screenshot of it. It can potentially lead to metagaming and that ultimately eliminates the organic and fluid aspects of roleplaying. Blank or completely blur out names if you have to. Sometimes even if you hide the names, people can still figure out who you're talking about, so keep that in mind. Remember to hide people's phone numbers in pictures. If there's a corrupt officer working with you — blur his name too. 7. No detailed explicit/grotesque/sexual content Don't post detailed roleplay of you having sex with some girl. Nobody wants to read that. Intimate scenes should be approached lightly. Let the viewer know you were with a partner, but don't go in details about it. The same can be said about roleplay involving torture or rape. Don't showcase such roleplay in great detail in your screenshots. 8. No screenshots of senseless killings Only post screen shots of murders if they are thoroughly roleplayed from start to end. The build up, the reason, the planning, how it happened, text, emotes. That's showcasing good roleplay and giving the scenario validity. Don't just post a picture of yourself aiming over another player in death mode. What does that achieve or showcase? Nothing. Don't just post a picture of a guy with red text over his head. If there is no real backstory or roleplay shown, nobody would care. 9. No "character introduction" screenshots Don't post screenshots of your character standing in front of a wall with a bunch of emotes explaining his whole background or persona. Emotes how someone is a resident of the area, goes to school but plans to drop out, lives with his abusive mother, drives a dirtbike, likes going to the swap meet, and so on. It's information nobody needs to know or wants to know. Show such traits in-game through role play. If you want to write an actual story about your character with actual text — feel free to do so instead. Don't follow this "character introduction" screenshot trend. 10. Don't quote piles of previous screen shots you posted Don't clog the thread unnecessarily by quoting your old screenshots as some prologue to your new screenshots. Put them in spoilers instead. If people want to see old screenshots — they would go to old pages or look through your posts. Put build up screenshots in a spoiler if you want to include them. There's no need for people to post the same screenshots multiple times through quotes. 11. Toggle the HUD Disable your HUD by pressing F7. It looks out of place and has no place on a screenshot. 12. Grammar and punctuation Everyone makes mistakes now and then, but grammar is important. Your pictures would look bad if you continuously make errors in your speech. Use more basic words if you have to. It makes your text harder to read if there's a typo every few lines. Also keep in mind that your sentence always starts with a capitalized letter and ends with a full stop (or question mark/exclamation point). 13. Be sure what you role play is correct If you ever get technical in your roleplay, you need to be sure you have the correct terms and idea of what you're roleplaying. If you're cutting your dope with another substance, research the correct one. If you're buying ingredients to cook meth, sell weed, smoking, drinking make sure to pick one that a store might sell in real life. If you're a gun dealer role playing in-depth around weapons, make sure you're aware of the models you're handling. If you're fixing a vehicle's part, make sure you know what you're doing. Examples can be endless. If there's a mistake in your role play, the whole scenario wouldn't be valid and people can rightfully call you out on it for making the whole scene look silly. Enjoy. Edited June 2, 2020 by colorlessrainbow 6 1 Link to comment
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