question about screen capturing

posted on April 25th, 2012, 11:10 am

was just wondering, when i take a pic ingame i see the colours in one way,
but when i open  them with windows picture viewer they seem darker.
but if i just double click on them they are autimatically opened with adobe fireworks and they seem brighter in colour.

(exampe, i took a picture of a bird of prey with a cool background and it was highlighted in purple,
when opened in windows picture viewer it was almost a silhouette in black)

i was just wondering if anyone could explain to me why picture viewer seems darker?
and does this mean if i uplaod it onto this site would it seem dull or its proper colour?

posted on April 25th, 2012, 12:00 pm

try upload a snap and we can see if it works. it should be fine.

i noticed that when i used the windows bundled picture viewer that white appears yellow. it might be some feature of my monitor, but my monitor might as well give instructions in latin, it's that crap.

posted on April 25th, 2012, 1:38 pm

i noticed that when i used the windows bundled picture viewer that white appears yellow. it might be some feature of my monitor, but my monitor might as well give instructions in latin, it's that crap.

Up until now, I thought I was the only one with this issue. I ruled out the graphics card (upgraded it at Christmas) but was loathe to part with a monitor that I spent £300 on. Curse you Currys!

As an aside, I would gladly pay extra for Latin instructions on my monitor. Scratch that, I'd gladly pay extra for Latin instructions on anything.

On topic:

It's probably best to treat picture viewer as a kind of emergency tool. If you're in a hurry it's quick to load up, and you can get a rough idea, but for everyday use there are other programs (Fireworks like you mentioned, Photoshop, probably even Paint) that will give much better results.

posted on April 25th, 2012, 1:53 pm

i use faststone for image viewing personally. it's not up to scratch with animated gifs, but it gets the job done.

posted on April 25th, 2012, 4:02 pm

I believe this is issue with gamma and/or color space. Gamma controls the brightness of colors while color space controls how color values in the image map to "real colors" (I say "real colors" because your screen may also have a certain color space which can also effect things). The problem is that not all picture viewers treat these aspects the same (or at all). My guess is that Windows Picture Viewer isn't considering gamma or color space at all resulting in a darker that usual image (assuming the image is stored with a gamma other than 1). Inversely my guess is that Fireworks is accounting for the gamma stored in the image and "gamma correcting" the image resulting in a brighter image. Ultimately these are all different from what you see in-game because those images are undergoing FO/A2's gamma correction and whatever adjustments your video card might make. It's all very messy.

Now to answer your question about whether a posted image will look right. I wouldn't worry about it. It's going to look different on everyone's monitor anyway because of monitor differences. Just post, if people complain that they can't see anything, tweak it a little.

posted on April 26th, 2012, 11:37 pm

ok here is the pic with the bird of prey, the purple is no way near what it was when playing the game

Attachments

posted on April 27th, 2012, 10:42 am

looks fine on my screen. also are you trying to give me the middle finger with that nebula?

posted on April 27th, 2012, 11:26 am

haha, i thought it would go well with a bird of prey

posted on April 27th, 2012, 6:06 pm

Which, the nebula or the finger? 
Also, it looks finei on mine too, although I couldn't tell you if it's close to what you see.

posted on April 27th, 2012, 6:47 pm

I see the BoP a little darker but other than that is fine. And Yes I can see the finger too