Hey there!

Pretty much what the title says. I played arround with my game a bit and tweaked it with realistic lighting and the FXAA process injector. Ingame I have a nice saturation, dark nights with the torches really point out in the darkness. When I make a screenshot of that though, it looks undersaturated, the colors are really bad and overall it is just ugly.

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197962323910/screenshot/596958827150492371?tab=public
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197962323910/screenshot/596958827150490631/?tab=public

I hope these screenshots give an idea of what I talk about. It all just seems....muddy.

Does anyone have an idea what causes this? I am not sure where to look. My desktop colour settings (difficult, since it is a laptop, no real options there...right?) or the mods that the screenshots somehow ignore? Something different? I am totally clueless here. Every hint much appreciated.

Jules

Agreed. the screenshot quality looks bad in full resolution. not sure what steam does to them

Do you have the Steam Overlay enabled and if so can you disable it and still take screenshots? I wouldn't know since I don't do either through steam but I do use the FXAA mod and my screenshots look good.

Maybe re-calibrate your color settings through your operating system?

Thanks for the fast replies, glad I am not the only one with this problem.

Now, I have disabled the overlay. Making screenshots is not possible anymore, so I used fraps. In fraps, the screenshot is way too dark. My color settings are pretty much standard, I just checked them today.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/20/tesv2012010712563281.jpg/

After taking a screenshot from Deus Ex:HR as a comparison, it definitely seems to be caused by Skyrim. So I guess I am talking about two different problems here: One is the difference in gamma, the other one is the blurriness caused by Skyrim. Any more advice?

Jules

Edit: Looking on the screenshot again, the colors are terrible (when zoomed)...

Why not use the in-game screenshot function?

There is an in-game screenshot function?

Will try this out as soon as possible and post results!

Edit: Tried it. The colours seem good now, but the screenshot is still a bit blurry. Textures look worse than in-game...
Edit2: Actually, the game creates two screenshots. One is the washed out, blurry one. The second one is nice and saturated. I am still wondering why steam and frapss won't get it right. I am really happy that I have some nice HQ screenshots now, thanks for that obvious hint . I never thought of that, stupid me.

I'll give you a hint, one of those screenshots captures filters, shader suites, and anything else being applied...while the other one doesn't.

If you lack a shader suite or injector, only 1 screenshot will be created. If you do have one(ex. FXAA process injector), both screenshots will be created. One is numbered(1,2,3,etc...) while the other one is random(4387700).

There's also the standard no-post processing stream screenshot...f12.

Thanks for the explanation!
I thought that this would be the reason, but since I don't know anything about shaders, injectors etc. I was not sure about that. It would be nice if Steam would actually recognise the filters etc. and take them into account when creating a screenshot. It is very comfortable to handle that way (with the online library and all). Well, at least now I know what to do to create some great looking screenshots of the game that represent how the game really looks like.

Also, if you have increased or decreased brightness in-game, taking a screenshot with ANY kind of screenshot tool or in-game screenshot function, WON'T show the difference of brightness that you actually have in-game.

Interesting...but somehow utterly stupid, I think. I mean, when I create a screenshot, I want a "photo" of my actual gaming experience, not something else?

Steam uses Jpeg with high compression so yes it looks worse. If you want a sharp image use png or uncompressed bmp.

Same with me. I have taken pics using Fraps and just using Skyrim standalone and hitting prtscrn in game. The bright/contrast of the screenshots look vastly different than what I took in game

The "solution" I found for this was to decrease the brightness (in other words gamma) in mods like FXAA injector instead. It works just the same way, AND it shows up on the screenshots then.

The only problem for me is though: when I record in game using a game recording program, no external shaders like FXAA or in-game brightness gets recorded in the video. This is sad, because you'll never be able to create these beautiful videos then to show off on YouTube.