User:Rvngt/Capturing a screenshot in Guild Wars

The first step is to take clean and crisp screenshots in Guild Wars, learn how to do so here.

1. We don't like image compression artifacts
And neither should you. Right click on your Guild Wars shortcut > properties. In the target line box, which should look something like this: Add -bmp at the end of the field like so: Now, whenever you take a screenshot, it will be saved as bitmap format. In other words, your screenshots will be 1:1 in quality from what you see in-game (no loss of quality). But keep in mind that files in your screenshot folder are much larger in size now. A 1680x1050 resolution screenshot in bitmap format is 5,169kb in size.

2. Anti-aliasing, multisampling/supersampling, and anisotropic filtering




By default, object edges are pixelated and textures are blurred over distance, we definitely don't want those to be present in our high quality screenshots. While it is possible to enable anti-aliasing (the smoothing of pixels across edges) through the in-game options menu, however it is not the case with anisotropic filtering and multisampling/supersampling.

Just a heads up that enabling these features will cripple your performance greatly, but I'm assuming that people who don't have high-end computers won't plan on playing the actual game with these settings cranked up anyways.

To enable the MS/SS and AF settings, go to your videocard driver control panel. I don't own an ATI brand videocard, but for Nvidia users, just simply right click on your desktop > NVIDIA Control Panel. Find the following settings: Max out both of these settings. For me, I have AF at 16x and transparency AA on supersampling. However not everyone has the hardware to get these settings, so if you can't get that high, just go as high as you can anyway.

As for the normal anti-aliasing option that you can access from the in-game options menu, I have that at 4x. For some odd reason it can't go beyond 4x in the menu, and if you try to force something like 8x or 16x AA from your control panel, AA simply doesn't work in-game--at least for me.

What you've done so far: enabled anti-aliasing (smoothing of pixels along edges), enabled anisotropic filter (sharpening of textures over distance), and supersampling transparency anti-aliasing that will perform AA on transparent textures, such as 2D railings, trees and foilage, as the normal AA won't affect those. If you can't handle supersampling, the multisampling method will work too.

3. Ready to screenshot
First, turn up the resolution to the biggest possible. 1680x1050 works great for me. What's important is that you pick a good location to pose in (if you're taking posing shots, that is). There's a ton of kickass scenery and landmarks in Guild Wars, so that shouldn't be much of a trouble. As long as you're not standing in front of a blurry wall. Hit printscreen, or whatever your screenshot button is.