Tutorial: How to Take High-Res Snapshots

I'm sure we've all wondered at one point or another how to get rid of those stupid jagged edges around our snapshots, yes? I know I did when I first started taking Second Life pictures. My photos always ended up with these ridiculous jagged lines that looked completely un-anti-aliased (is that even a word?) when I opened them in Photoshop. This always added hours of work for me because I just couldn't STAND having those jagged edges in my snaps! Well... I'm about to teach you a way to minimize them, if not eliminate them completely.

An example of the jaggedness (you might need to click the picture for a larger view to see):

As you can see (when you click on the picture) the jagged edges in the left picture are pretty pronounced... where as the picture on the right, the only jaggeds you have to deal with are due to the avatar mesh (which is a WHOLE other tutorial in itself - we'll get to that later). These edges can make extreme close-ups pretty trying, not to mention annoying.

For now, let's take a look at how I fix this problem whenever I take a snap:

Some Helpful Tips

1. The first thing you will need to do is activate your Advanced menu control by pressing Ctrl+Alt+D. In this menu, make sure that "High-res Snapshot" is selected. You can also select "Quiet snapshot to disk" if you like, but that's not necessary. It will just eliminate that annoying snapshot sound and animation whenever you take a snap. (Be a snapshot ninja - eliminate snapshot sounds! Mwahahaa!)

2. Next, I always, always always, always, always take a snapshot at 3x my current screen resolution. So, for example, my current screen resolution is 1680x1050. This would result in my taking a snapshot three times as large as it would've been.

3. For your reference, here are the snapshot settings (and location of the High-res snapshot tick) that I typically use.

These two things greatly, greatly contribute to eliminating those painful jaggies and making snapshots SO MUCH EASIER to work with in post-processing or even in taking high resolution raw snaps.

But this isn't all! You should also take some great care to turn your graphics preferences up as high as you can whenever you're taking a snapshot. Because your graphics card is basically determining how detailed any video/game you're looking at will be, making sure your graphics are turned up, at least while you're taking pictures, is vital.

Below, are the settings I typically use. If nothing else, be sure your mesh details are set to high. Basic shaders does not necessarily need to be turned on, but if your lighting is being set by Windlight, you will need it. Bump mapping and shiny, also not necessary to have turned on if your computer cannot handle it.

I highly recommend playing with your settings and seeing which settings you can take to the extreme to make your snapshots as glam as possible. These settings can be lowered again once your snapshot is taken, but for optimal, less jagged snapshots, high detail is a must!

Next week... basic post processing? Who knows! Stay tuned. :)