How to Join

What this guide will show you:


How to make simple and effective screenshots with Adobe Photoshop AND Microsoft's Paint.
How to import screenshots into your desired editing program.
Different editing methods/techniques. (Limited to PS)



1) Taking the screenshot.

-I usually use the SAMP screenshot function by tapping F8, now we've got a raw screenshot.
Another way is printscreen then ctrl+v the image to your editing program for editing
(This method also has some errors if you're using Windows 7)

2) Importing it into your image editing program.

-As seen above, the path to the screenshot is pretty straightforward, just grab it and drag it out to your desktop
(I usually do this so you have easy access if you fuck it up later on)
Your folder for screenshots could actually be filled up with accidental presses of F8, this happens alot to me, so I recommend keeping it clean so it's a quicker process when you're looking for a screenshot.

3) Editing the screenshot.

-So let's begin with paint as it's the easiest program to get your hands on and use.
Drag your raw screenshot in, from your desktop, it should look like the image below.

Spoiler:

Now that you've got the image in, you need to crop it, as most of us play on a high resolution.
Go up towards the top corner, and click on the "select" button, as seen in the image below.

Spoiler:

Here's a GIMP video screenshots tutorial from BlvckScvleLSRP




Now, quick little intresting point, most people like to exclude nametags and other things for fear of metagame.
The easiest way to get rid of nametags and what-not is to crop them out, which is done while cropping the image itself to a set size.
Now, once you've selected the tool shown above, click and drag it across the area of the screenshot you want cropped, or to be shown.
Like so:

Spoiler:

At this point, you actually crop the image by moving up to the "crop" option beside the "select" button we used earlier, and just click it.
Another way of doing it is right-clicking the actual image and pressing on "crop" in the drop-down menu, it does the same thing.
Image below explains both methods.

Spoiler:

OR

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Now, the image should "jump" forward and only the part you cropped, is visible, now we're nearly done.
I usually size my images to about 720, then center them on the forums, if you make each screenshot, about 720 width, and let the height flow, it looks nice and neat and it cuts down the length of the process.
To resize the image, go up to the "resize" option just beneath "crop" at the top toolbar.
Flick across to the pixels option, go down to horizontal and replace the numbers in the box with 720.

Spoiler:

It should just resize normally and that's us done.
To save, go to the top bar once again and click on the floppy disk, or the default keyboard shortcut is "ctrl+s".

This is the end product, a simple screenshot.




Now, with Photoshop, it's a little more complicated, but only on the eyes, we have alot more room to play with the image though.

Drag the screenshot from desktop into Photoshop, it'll open up almost automatically like so;

Spoiler:

(I had to use a different image this time as I managed to lose the other one in the process)


Now, this time we make a new image so to say.
Go up to the file option in the top left, click it and hit on "new".
You'll be shown the following screen:

Spoiler:

You need to copy everything in your box, the same as mine, but of course, this is all on you, as I said previously, we have room to work when we use Photoshop.
Once you hit "OK", another, predetermined image will pop up over the raw screenshot you dragged in.
Now, jump back to the raw screenshot and click on the "crop" tool, shown in the image below on the toolbar.

Spoiler:

Just like paint, we click and drag it over the desired part of the image we want shown, like in the image below(This is getting tedious)

Spoiler:

Now right click and select the crop option, once again, the image'll jump up to only what's in the box.
What I do from this point, is literally "pick up" the cropped image, and drag it to the new image we created before.
So, just click and hold on the cropped image and drag it to the new box, then re-position it by either pressing ctrl+t and moving it, or just clicking and dragging it around.
Once again, choice is yours.
(Don't forget to get rid of the crop tool once you've cropped the image, go back up to the toolbar and click on the mouse pointer.
If you do accidentally make a little crop, you can always just hit escape)

Editing the screenshot, is on you, we can leave it as a simple image like this or play with it a bit, get something nice going.
I'll show you my usual method of editing screenshots, which is actually due credits fully to Nazzko and Jtg811 for showing me how.
First off, we head up to the "image" option at the top and open the drop-down menu and go into adjustments, then brightness/contrast.
So: image>adjustments>brightness/contrast.
Then we can adjust the contrast to darken the shadows, don't worry if it gets very dark, we can change all this later.

Spoiler:

From this point, I usually start to play with the colors, so once again, image>adjustments>levels.
This part is really very about personal preference, so play about and see what you can come up with.
I then move onto curves, so once again, personal preference, play about.
The path is image>adjustments>curves.
Now, it's time to give it a little bit of color, this part is thanks to Nazzko for showing me how.
Open up a new layer with ctrl+shift+N.
Then go up to image>apply image, this basically duplicates the image and applies a certain effect to the whole thing.

Spoiler:

For changing the colors, I add a gradient map.
Go up to image>adjustment>gradient map.
A box will open up, you just hit the drop-down and go to the orange/purple preset and click that, hitting okay.
It should completely destroy the picture, but don't worry, we'll fix all that.

Spoiler:

(Ignore that idiot on xfire)



Go down to the layers section of your photoshop, bottom right and you should see a box marked "opacity" with a 100% indicator in it.
You can type in your own level or click it and drag the bar up and down to check out different opacity's in real time.
I usually go with around 20% as it looks nice.
From here, I'd consider the screenshot completed, others would add more and once again, there's alot of room for creativity, so play around with photoshop, it's quite an advanced program and you can make some nice stuff.
For a final touch, I "stroke" the edges of the image so it looks nice on the forums, I'll show you how.
First off, a new layer is needed, so ctrl+shift+N and then hit okay.
Then we need to apply the image, so up to the top, image>apply image.
This is so the stroke actually covers all the edges.
Then go up to edit>stroke, click on the color and change it to black and hit okay.
You should notice the picture has a thin white line around it.
I prefer just 1 pixel as it's nice and neat, but others like more, it's up to you.

Spoiler:

And we're done, at least I am, so if you want to continue and edit some more, feel free, but that's my guide to an easy and attractive screenshot.

The end product:



Note; this guide has been adapted to this server by myself, it was written by myself for an MTA server.