Quick question on overview screenshots

[Lotus]

Hey everyone,

I can get the overview screenshot to work for my mission as it is basic, but ever notice how sharp and clear the images for the original single missions are, that were released with the game?  Is that because settings in every way were turned all the way up, or did they sharpen it and touch it up w/ Photoshop or something?

If anyone knows of a way to make it less grainy etc, please let me know.  I'm not good with modifying pics.  Thank you.

[THobson]

To understand why your pictures are grainy it would help if you could explain exactly how you get them.

[Lotus]

Well, I take an in-game screenshot (cause I'm using a switchmove anim for the pose of some people).  I figure there's a much better way to do so, however if there is, I'm not aware of it.

I take the screenshot merely by pressing the Print Screen key.  Please tell me if there's a better way.  Much appreciated =)

[Trapper]

It's ok how you take them.

Then In your graphic editing program...
1. Resize the picture (maybe calculate the border you'll add around later)
2. At least sharpen it a little bit (or if it looks very blury in game, return to this step and sharpen it over the top)
3. Add the border

4. Save it.
You're saving it the normal way as a jpg, right? Try to find the save/export options for jpg. Set the compression level to zero or one percent, so you don't lose too much quality.


I think the reason for your grainy pictures is step four, if your default jpg compression is set higher by default.

[macguba]

The big secret is composition.   Don't try to cram too much into your picture - big landscape shots just don't work.   Focus on one vehicle (or a couple of loons) with a little background and that's it.    Any more just never looks good.

[Tyger]

Actually, he might be saving it as a bitmap in paint. Which therefore explains why the graininess.

For graphics, I suggest either one of two types:

• .jpg - Used for detail or photographic images
• .gif - Used when there are large amounts of a solid color such as an all black background.

So base what you save your photos as off of that.

I also suggest saving it as a .tga (Targa) straight off if you can, then opening it in Texview and converting to .paa.

[Trapper]

@Tyger
How does OFP support .bmp? I've just tried it for an overview pic and it didn't work, just like I had expected.
Aren't the only supported formats .jpg, .pac and .paa?

Also I don't understand how an uncompressed .bmp format should cause quality problems like graininess. That's much more likely for .jpg compression.

[Tyger]

No, OFPEC doesn't support bitmaps.  ;D I meant you might be saving it as a bitmap. But apparently you weren't.

Bitmaps, as you probably know, are just a series of solid colored pixels aranged on the screen. When you expand that, then each pixel is increased by your expasion ratio. That means you would end up getting blocks of solid color, and the picture looks terrible.

For instance, if you paste a 600x800 resolutin printscreen in to a photo editor, you would have grainess if someone else viewed your 600x800 on a 1024x... crap, forgot. But there you have it.

[Lotus]

Ok thanks everyone, I'll try it and see what happens.

Yes, I was saving it as a .jpg, however I never compressed it at all or anything. Thank you all for your help =)

[Trapper]

When I save a jpg in Paintshop Pro, I'm forced to use at least 1% compression. It's because compression is the main/only adventage of jpg format.

Another hint you can try is saving your image at a high resolution (ie 512x512) and using html commands in the overview to let OFP do the resizing. Sometimes it looks better, but it's not used for the original pics.


continuing my discussion with Tyger...

But every digital image format uses pixels as the smallest image parts, representing one color value and it's position.
Expanding quality is only effected by the resampling system/algorythm used, not the image format.
As most photo editors open the image at 100% size, different screen resolutions would only show the picture in different sizes (on the monitors) at first, but not grainy.

[Tyger]

Correct. But a jpeg uses more pixels per inch than a bitmap does, and a jpeg supports what we call interlacing whereas a bitmap does not. Standard jpegs use 100 px/in while bitmaps are usually 64-72 px/in.

Interlacing in used much like a gradient; it is an intermediate color between two other areas of color to smooth the transition. Bitmaps do not support this, and hence the grainy effect.

You're probably right about the resolution stuff. We weren't taught much about resolution and moniter displays in Graphics Design 143. I was trying to piece together something logical...  

[Trapper]

At least you were taught this. I'm only trying to figure it out by myself.

Pixel/inch is printing related. Digital images don't have an inch or "reality" size stored, they only have their pixel size. Only with the software you use for printing them, you define a "real" size, and then (on the print) the picture quality becomes mesurable in ppi. So even an image with low pixel count can have a very good ppi quality if you print it small enough.

Example:
IIRC normal photos have a quality around 200 ppi (for print it's called dpi). If you want a print of exactly this quality, at size 3.5 x 5" (9x13cm, a common german size) you need a digital source image of 700x1000 pixels.
If you would print the same image at size 7 x 10" the print quality is reduced to 100 ppi.
Some software/printers could try to increase the ppi/dpi with there own interlacing procedure, but the print won't contain more information. Only a nicer looking bluring instead of graininess.

For images viewed on monitors, the originating ppi is based on the monitor quality (LED/inch or something). And the smallest point, a monitor is able to display at a choosen resolution, is illuminated with the color stored in one image pixel (if displayed at 100% size).
But an image floating around in virtual reality just doesn't have a fixed inch size. You'll notice that, if you should ever start working with a ruler on the monitor and try to get the same results on a different working station with the same file.


I'm just guessing, but the interlacing you deem as a better quality of jpg files will be the compressing method of this format. That means a 640x480 image is reduced in file size, because jpg stores the original information of (ie) only 320x240 pixels and interlaces them back to 640x480 pixels everytime the image is displayed. - In the end that means, to reduce the file size the image loses quality (original pixel informations).
But if you enlarge a jpg it'll still become grainy like any other digital image, and you'll also enlarge the artefacts (sideeffect of the jpg interlacing) that you'll have to remove.

Bmp is a quality lossless format like tga, that's why the file size is so big. It always stores the original data for every pixel of it's resolution. But that doesn't mean that it's in any way more grainy than a jpg.

Damn that's complicated stuff.   I just want to say there's no way, a compressing format makes an image looking nicer for me, than a lossless format.
Of course, the other way around one can always say a grainy picture looks better if it's blured, but that is part of editing the image, and not part of bmp/jpg format selection.


EDIT: Just had a second look at Paintshop Pro. Some image formats, especially the unique ones of some editing software store a pixel/inch value in the file, but that remains somekind of "quick 1:1 print size" help, and doesn't bind the image forever to this ppi quality. Printing the the picture not in this defined 1:1 size would already change the ppi quality, as the pixel numbers stay the same and the inches change.

EDIT2: I somewhat got your point now. Attached are screenshots of an image, saved quality lossless and also as jpg with 50% compression. - You can achieve somekind of bluring effect that way, but also the quality loss is remarkable. I wouldn't recommend it.

EDIT3: @Lotus
You could attach your original screenshot zipped to this topic, telling us which part of it you want as overview picture. Everyone who likes could do his best on editing it, and attach the result with some explanations of the work.

[Lotus]

Okay, I think I will.  At the moment, my screenshot is on another disk/computer elsewhere.  When I get to it, which should be soon, I'll put my screenshot up on here and maybe someone will take a look at it.

Thanks again everyone

[Tyger]

@Trapper

Yeah, mate, thats what I'm talking about. Although with MS Paint, you can get a slightly worse effect  ;D