Photographing Sims

by Vashti

In this tutorial we will be talking about how to get good screenshots of Sims. Taking good screenshots of a Sim can be challenging, but, there are simple and reliable techniques that will give you good results every time. Below is a screenshot of the same Sim photographed on my computer with the same graphics card. As you can see there is a huge difference between the pictures!

Some of you may be wondering how to take a screenshot. There are 2 ways: First, the less effecient way:

Hold down the Ctrl (control) key on the bottom left hand of your keyboard and press your prnt scrn (print screen) key on the top right hand side of the keyboard. (See highlighted keys.)

Once you’ve copied your image open up any graphics program. Go to the Edit Menu and select Paste. Your unedited screenshot will appear in your graphics program window and you'll be able to edit it as you need to.

In this instance I'm using MS Paint, which is available on every Microsoft operating system.

Lets face it, the default CAS house is terrible. It looks like the Sim equivalent of someone taking a quick shot with a Polaroid.

However, you do have a couple of options available that will improve the background. If you would like your shots to look like you’ve put more thought into them, creating your own Custom CAS house is an easy option to help make your shots look more finished.

There's a tutorial on how to create custom CAS houses at Sublime Sims. One tool that's available to enhance your custom CAS houses are the Invisible CAS Objects by Windkeeper. You can find these objects here. These enable you to make the mirror, the couch, and the pictures disappear from your CAS house so you can furnish it more to your tastes. However, if you don’t want to go to that effort you can also download a premade custom CAS house from Sublime Sims. There are many other fine sites, like Mod the Sims 2, that provide ready-made Custom CAS houses, also.

When you download your custom CAS house, you are able to drop the CAS straight into your downloads folder and it will work just fine in your game. Please note: For your custom CAS house to work properly, you need to have any custom walls and floors or invisible objects that you’ve used in the house in your downloads folder. You also need to remember that a CAS house is a lot, so if it’s been made with a particular EP, you need that EP to use it.

Below you can see the difference between the default CAS house and the same sim photographed in a Custom CAS house using Windkeeper’s invisible objects. (This Sim was photographed in the Sublime Sims CAS house available here.) Even though the shot is still blurry, you can see the difference in terms of how polished the presentation looks with a custom CAS house.

The next thing you can do to improve your screenshots is to turn up your graphics resolution in-game. This can be done either within CAS or from your main game screen.

First, ensure you don’t have any sims displayed on the podium or where the podium would be. Your CAS display should be empty of Sims. Press the Options button ( ... ) on the User Interface puck at the bottom left of the screen:

You now see an area with a number of choices. Press the Graphics/Performance Options icon:

Turn all of the options in the first two rows (shadows, lighting, graphic effects, texture detail, and reflections) up to high and turn up "Smooth Edges". Then click Apply Changes.

A box will come up asking you whether you want to keep the changes. Click Yes.

Please note: It is advisable to return your settings back to the recommended levels after you’ve finished taking your pictures or your game performance will become very sluggish.

Below is a picture of the same sim after we turned up our graphics options. As you can see, you can get a much better quality image with exactly the same computer just by tweaking your settings.

It is really important to think about position, layout, and how much you want to zoom in to photograph your Sim.

There are a couple of things we can learn from models:

• First, you get a much stronger and more elegant image if we turn our Sims slightly sideways. Models use this trick all the time to make themselves look thinner.
• Second, zoom in on feature areas. If you’re photographing a floorlength dress, it’s fine to do a full body shot. However if you’re photographing a knee length dress, photograph it from just below her hemline to just above her head. Take advantage of feature areas on your outfit and zoom in to display them prominently.

This is the same Sim turned slightly sideways and zoomed in so we can see the dress more closely.

One more tiny secret. When I’m editing the image in MS Paint, I initially save it as a BMP, edit it as a BMP, and resave it only once as a JPG.

There’s a reason for this. BMPs retain a lot more richness as an image than JPGs do. You want to retain that image richness as long as possible and minimise any loss. This is one of the great secrets to ending up with a truly wonderful image.

I hope this tutorial helps you take your own wonderful screenshots and produce Sim images with confidence. If you have any questions about the techniques discussed in this tutorial, don't be afraid to ask any of the wonderful people on our forum for help!

Kind Wishes,

Vashti