#i am very passionate about my virtual photography

[kemendin]

how do you take such good screenshots? I've always struggled with taking good ones myself

The short answer is - practice, persistence, in my case some photoshop, and a healthy dose of luck when it comes to timing things haha. Combat screens especially are very hit or miss (pun intended) in games like SWTOR where there's no pause button, so I just spam the screenshot key and hope for the best. I promise, for every screenshot that I post, there are 10-40 others that did not work xD

But for a more practical look, let's take one of the Ibis ones I just posted. Here is the original screenshot vs the final version:

In terms of in game setup, paying attention to the camera angle and where the ambient lighting falls is very helpful. You get a feel for what angles look best on a character, and you decide what your focus is - do you want their face/model to be centre stage, or is it more of an overall composition, maybe with a dramatic back silhouette? (I love back shots honestly, maybe because I'm usually looking at their backs as I play).

Make sure your character isn't lost in the background, some environments can be way too busy for character-focused shots. Sometimes you'll need to move/rotate, sometimes it just takes choosing a more contrasting outfit if you've got one.

Also, play around with emotes/expressions if that's a feature of the game you're in! I have some staple emotes I'll fall back on, and again, you'll get a feel for how to time them if you do it often enough.

As you can see, I do a fair bit of post-processing on my screenshots. I know a few folks use reshade in game for shaders and depth of field - I found it wonky when I installed it, so instead I do all of that after the fact in photoshop.

Typically, I'll crop a screenshot, especially for more zoomed out shots, and sometimes rotate the angle for a more dramatic effect like the above. I love adding depth of field with the lens blur filter, though it can be finicky to make sure just the character is selected, requires a lot of patience haha. And then I'll play around with things like contrast and colour grading. For the above, I actually didn't do a lot of colour tweaks, and I just made sure to enhance the highlights a bit to make things pop. I also added a motion blur effect on the blaster shot. Sometimes for landscape style shots I'll add the black cinema bars, like here, for that extra oomph, other times a shot's fine without them.

So yeah, there's a lot more that goes on here than just hitting the screenshot key - a lot of time spent posing, adjusting, re-doing, and then going in and editing after. As with any art form, patience and practice are truly your friends!