Screenshots
I love what I do for a living, and not many people can say that, so I know how lucky I am. Although it isn't the sole thing I do, part of my job is to review games for Macworld magazine. Each month I review, on average, around four to six games for the magazine. Usually I'll squeeze in a couple of "big" titles -- A-list releases from major publishers -- along with a few second-tier releases and a kid's game or a shareware title. Each game I review has to be accompanied by screenshots showing the game in action.
I hate taking screenshots. If I reviewed general productivity applications or specialty apps like music or video editing utilities, taking screenshots would be a lot less obnoxious than it is. You can stage those shots pretty easily -- get a palette of tools ready, load up some sample imagery, make everything look busy, then, *snap.*
Games are a different story.
The Mac's built-in command-shift-3 Vulcan nerve-pinch usually takes screenshots, but it doesn't always work in games. And sometimes, when it does, the brightness is so off that the picture is very muddy and dark.
Sometimes you can work around it by using a third-party utility like Ambrosia Software's indispensible Snapz Pro. But that sometimes introduces its own set of problems. Although it plays much better with others than it used to, Snapz Pro can occasionally cause games to freeze or lock up, especially if they don't offer support for windowed (as opposed to full-screen) gameplay. This problem isn't unique to Snapz Pro, either. Sometimes screens captured with either method appear scrambled, jumbled or incomplete.
More often than not, I'll depend on the game's built-in ability to take screenshots. Sometimes, albeit rarely, it's as plain as day: F13 will grab a screen, or F9, or what-have-you. More often than not, these methods are poorly documented or totally undocumented. This requires me to scour the Web looking for hints and tips from the developers or from PC game sites, or bother the Mac game developer. This sometimes requires modification to the game's initialization or configuration files in order to work.
I could be lazy about it and go to the publisher and ask them for screens, and in a couple of pinches I have done exactly that. I don't want the stuff that shows up in Macworld to be the same screens that you seen in a MacAddict or GamePro review, though, so in the rare circumstances that my hand has been forced this way, I'll plead with the publisher to send me exclusive screens that haven't been used elsewhere.
The actual mechanics of taking an in-game screenshot are only one problem, however. The more significant problem is properly staging the shot. This requires some directorial skill worthy of a movie or TV show. I want to show the game off in a good way, if it's a decent game. I want my screenshot to be colorful and bright. I want a sense of action and drama -- characters with arms and legs akimbo, explosions, projectiles -- whatever.
Also, I'm in the middle of the game when this happens. Things are trying their best to kill me, usually. So as frazzled as I am already by trying to stage the shot and take the picture, I have the added distraction of making sure I dodge enough bullets or missiles or fangs and claws to avoid being killed before I know I've successfully grabbed the shot.
At least Steven Spielberg wasn't worried about actually being bitten by the shark as he filmed Jaws.
Oh well. Anyway I slice it, I'm getting paid to play games, and that's cool. It's a moral victory for me each time it happens as I remember when I was a kid and my dear old mom telling me that playing games on my computer was a waste of time. Okay, I'll shut up now.
Comments
Yes, you lucky lucky man you.
I do remember many years back, I took a series of screenshots from Mac games, and took them and Ambrosia's old screensaver program to the OfficeMax I worked at and put them on one of the Performa's we still sold at the time. I had a Mac IIvx at home at the time, and the shots were from Maelstrom, Aperion, Warcraft, Escape Velocity, and perhaps one or two others. I think I used Snapz version 1 to do it.
Posted by: Alphax | March 3, 2004 02:31 PM
Note to self: make sure each press package of upcoming titles ships with unique screenshots... ;)
Posted by: fccovett | March 3, 2004 03:29 PM
Recall the dreadful IMG "screenshots" of Deus Ex, where they faked the screenshots in Photoshop and then tried to claim it was from a secret level designed solely for IMG's use?
Infinite sadness ...
Posted by: }{ellfire | March 3, 2004 07:26 PM
As I remember it, it wasn't "dear old Mom" but a big shot, interfering uncle who told you that being a writer was an impossible way to make a living. "Mom" was just worried about going broke providing quarters for your trips to the local gaming arcade.....
Posted by: CapeCoder | March 4, 2004 07:00 AM
Well being a writer is a bloody hard way to make a living unless you are very fortunate.
One of the most amusing recent set of screen-shots I have seen is ones of Shadowbane for a PC mag. For some odd reason, none of the toons had any weapons in their hands, despite the fact they were in fight mode. It looked rather daft.
Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge | March 4, 2004 10:08 AM
re: Screenshots.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has that problem.
Posted by: Corey Tamas | March 4, 2004 01:42 PM
I'm amazed by how well Snapz Pro has worked for me since I started using it two weeks ago. As for taking shots, I usually wait until I'm just about to die to take the shots. Nothing like a full-figured WWII German rifleman aiming at you point blank from three feet away to make an exciting screengrab.
Grabbing screens from cinematics usually work well also, as they're usually framed nicely and show off some cool effects, although you don't want to take too many of those since they don't show off gameplay.
The problem I've found, too, is that it's hard to capture the essence of a game in a still. You could be involved in the most outrageous, full-frontal, ballz-to-the-wall firefight on the beach assault in Halo, but, without movement, none of the dozen or so screenshots taken convey the excitement and emotion. I don't know how many screenshots I've thrown away that, in the moment, seemed like cool and exciting shots, but which, upon review later, seemed pretty dull taken out of context.
Oh, and a quick fix to dark screengrabs - press Apple-Shift-L for autolevels, an automatic levels adjustment that nine times out of ten helps with the brightness issue. If you're tweaking by hand, press Apple-L, then drag the right triangle in the historgram to the left to boost your white levels. Drag the middle triangle to the left to boost your grey levels. A combination of those two should get you nice, juicy screenshots.
Posted by: Jean-Luc Dinsdale | March 8, 2004 01:41 PM
Oops - the shortcuts described above are for Photoshop.
Posted by: Jean-Luc Dinsdale | March 8, 2004 01:42 PM