Screenshots

[Grey Cloud]

For some reason all my screenshots have started looking like this:

Er, no they don't. They actually like they are way over-exposed to the point of being almost white. Edit: see the image below.

 

[\spoiler]

I'm also pretty sure that jpg used to be the default format.

 

 

Edited March 5, 2025 by Grey Cloud

[Grey Cloud]

This the same image saved as a jpg and is how the png looks in image viewer.

Paint says that any transparency will be lost when doing the save as.

 

[Grey Cloud]

The plot thickens.

PNG

 

JPG

 

 

[traison]

22 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

The plot thickens.

 

Not really. The image is just mostly transparent. If I had to guess, this screenshot only includes imagespace effects and not the image underneath that. Which tool you should take screenshots with is going to be different depending on what your rendering pipeline is looking like.

 

33 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

I'm also pretty sure that jpg used to be the default format.

 

PNG is the default format in SSE.

Edited March 5, 2025 by traison

[Grey Cloud]

I took this one earlier because of how good things were looking in the game. It's 4:57pm and a bright, sunny day. Just CS and all the add-ons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 5, 2025 by Grey Cloud

[Grey Cloud]

8 minutes ago, traison said:

If I had to guess, this screenshot only includes imagespace effects and not the image underneath that. Which tool you should take screenshots with is going to be different depending on what your rendering pipeline is looking like.

I'm just hitting Print Screen.

[traison]

10 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

I'm just hitting Print Screen.

 

Irrelevant. You need to know which utility is taking that screenshot and at what point in the rendering it is.

[Grey Cloud]

13 minutes ago, traison said:

 

Irrelevant. You need to know which utility is taking that screenshot and at what point in the rendering it is.

And how do I do that?

[Gukahn]

If you're just using the print button it might be steam that does it.

You should be able to  check if it is by looking there

Steam\userdata\<User ID>\760\remote\<App ID>\screenshots

 

I would just try another tool really quick, like OBSE that's what I use and I've never had any problems with it apart from forgetting to start it 🤔 

Edited March 5, 2025 by Gukahn

[pinky6225]

PrintScreen is the default key for both SE and ENB (key code 44) so unbind one (if you go for ENB you'll need to edit ENBlocal.ini) and see what you get when you make one

 

There is also

 

[FILE]
ScreenshotFormat=0

 

in ENBLocal but STEPs / The internet in general seem to have not described this (least that i could find after a bit of googling) to say what the possible values are / supported formats etc

[Grey Cloud]

12 minutes ago, pinky6225 said:

PrintScreen is the default key for both SE and ENB (key code 44) so unbind one (if you go for ENB you'll need to edit ENBlocal.ini) and see what you get when you make one

 

There is also

 

[FILE]
ScreenshotFormat=0

 

in ENBLocal but STEPs / The internet in general seem to have not described this (least that i could find after a bit of googling) to say what the possible values are / supported formats etc

Not using ENB.

 

19 minutes ago, Gukahn said:

OBSE

What's this? The only thing I can find is Oblivion Script Extender.

Steam hasn't done anything on my machine since 2016/17.

Everything was fine a few months ago.

From last July.

Edited March 5, 2025 by Grey Cloud

[Gukahn]

Just now, Grey Cloud said:

What's this? The only thing I can find is Oblivion Script Extender.

Aah sorry, my mistake, it's called OBS 😅

 

https://obsproject.com/de

 

[Dm0n]

HDR enabled?

[Grey Cloud]

1 minute ago, Gukahn said:

Aah sorry, my mistake, it's called OBS 😅

 

https://obsproject.com/de

 

It's a bit of an overkill just to take a screenshot every now and again. 🤯

[Gukahn]

Just now, Grey Cloud said:

It's a bit of an overkill just to take a screenshot every now and again. 🤯

Mhm.. Yeah might be not the best for regular uses 🤔  It doesn't need "that" much ressources if only used for pictures but there should be lighter  options out there

[Dm0n]

4 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

It's a bit of an overkill just to take a screenshot every now and again. 🤯

try photomode or something like that. Display tweaks installed? Try to screenshot without enp present...

[Grey Cloud]

3 minutes ago, Dm0n said:

HDR enabled?

Where?

I'm not running this:

Vanilla HDR though I may have at one time. There seems to be some confusion over whether it is now incorporated into CS.

[Grey Cloud]

16 minutes ago, Dm0n said:

try photomode or something like that. Display tweaks installed? Try to screenshot without enp present...

I might try Photomode later.

I'm not running Display Tweaks.

"enp present" - if you mean ENB then I don't use one.

 

[traison]

1 hour ago, Grey Cloud said:

And how do I do that?

 

Determining in which order things are done may not be practical at this point, but you should know whether you have ENB, ReShade, CS or any other 3rd party graphics or rendering altering mod installed. You already said you don't have ENB, but what about the others?

 

As for taking a screenshot, well that's where the order matters but like I said it may be more trouble than its worth to figure it out. As an example: I noticed when I was using ENB that my screenshots were darker than they should have been. This might suggest some post processing effect was rendered after the screenshot was taken. This issue went away on its own, probably with an ENB update or preset switch. When I switched to CS, again the screenshots were not what I saw on the screen when I took them. Now I'm taking screenshots with ReShade; this and the fps counter are the only reasons I have it installed right now. I'm still not sure if the screenshots are as bright as what I saw on the screen when I took them. I'm thinking the contrast and brightness settings from the vanilla game may not be included in it.

 

OBS, which was recommended earlier, while overkill yes, *may* be one of the only reliable ways to take 1:1 screenshots. We have other viable alternatives as well, such as nVidia's overlay, Steam overlay, AMD probably have something and probably a thousand other utilities; but you'll have to test these yourself. Basically what you need is a utility which can copy the frame buffer just before it gets flipped. OBS most likely taps into this, so that it can capture each frame for videos, hence why I said it may be the most reliable.

 

Most of this is speculation obviously, but I hope you see what I'm getting at here.

 

Edit: and for any future Googling people, and posterity: No, the brightness settings of your monitor will not apply to screenshots.

Edited March 5, 2025 by traison

[traison]

And to answer your totally unrelated question:

14 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Vanilla HDR though I may have at one time. There seems to be some confusion over whether it is now incorporated into CS.

 

It is built-in now, but they forgot to mention you still need the ini changes from the Vanilla HDR page. Then again, I find CS in its entirety is massively dependant on Skyrim ini settings, and I'd recommend anyone switching to it to reset their inis regardless of how clever they think they've been in the past configuring them.

Edited March 5, 2025 by traison

[Grey Cloud]

22 minutes ago, traison said:

You already said you don't have ENB, but what about the others?

I'm only CS and its add-ons. Definitely without a reshader and as far as I know without anything else.

 

17 minutes ago, traison said:

It is built-in now, but they forgot to mention you still need the ini changes from the Vanilla HDR page.

I'll give the ini settings a try. I'm not looking for an absolute screen/screenshot match just a usable screenshot image.

 

I did find something on Github about the problem but doodlum said he couldn't reproduce it. The OP and a couple of others posted images and the thread went dead.

Github

[Dm0n]

Simplest solution would be what traison already said: download blank enb from offical site to create tga/bnp screenshots, or  use mod to screenshoting, or install third party software : amd adrenaline/nvidia geforce etc.

[Grey Cloud]

33 minutes ago, Dm0n said:

Simplest solution would be what traison already said: download blank enb from offical site to create tga/bnp screenshots, or  use mod to screenshoting, or install third party software : amd adrenaline/nvidia geforce etc.

That would be a workaround not a solution. I want to know what is causing it so I can stop it happening now and in the future.

 

1 hour ago, traison said:

you still need the ini changes from the Vanilla HDR page

Tried the ini settings, prefs and custom, and they did nothing.

[traison]

13 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

Tried the ini settings, prefs and custom, and they did nothing.

 

Your game should have gotten several times brighter and more vibrant, but lets not get sidetracked on this. Create another thread if you want to look into this issue.

 

13 minutes ago, Grey Cloud said:

I want to know what is causing it so I can stop it happening

 

Here's a sanity check:

 

Unpack interface\controls\pc\controlmap.txt from the vanilla Interface BSA, then change a couple of keys around:

Wait				0xff				0xff	0x0020				1	1	1	0x808
Screenshot			0x14				0xff	0xff				0	0	0

 

Then press "T" to take a screenshot. Is it still transparent?

[Grey Cloud]

14 minutes ago, traison said:

 

Your game should have gotten several times brighter and more vibrant, but lets not get sidetracked on this. Create another thread if you want to look into this issue.

 

 

Here's a sanity check:

 

Unpack interface\controls\pc\controlmap.txt from the vanilla Interface BSA, then change a couple of keys around:

Wait				0xff				0xff	0x0020				1	1	1	0x808
Screenshot			0x14				0xff	0xff				0	0	0

 

Then press "T" to take a screenshot. Is it still transparent?

The Wait line is there but the is no Screenshot line. Should I add it?