looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

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Dr.Flay
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by Dr.Flay »

Delacroix wrote:One word: Steam. Either rebuy UT and Unreal for that platform or Add A Non-Steam Game and run Unreal / Unreal Tournament via Steam. Steam's screenshot grabber captures screens in ANY resolution without corrupting and it saves them as .png.
Or just get the GT lite app for free and do the same thing ;) (for free)
http://www.gametracker.com/downloads/

I figure Nomad is wanting the convenience of it being automated.

I think we should make it clear about the use of PNG and JPG.
PNG is perfect for storing your images at full quality, or sending to print.
It was invented to replace TIFF and GIF formats, not JPEG.
I store all my images in this format unless I require the camera header info.
For the web;
As a rule-of-thumb, use it for all your transparent or 8-bit images, and JPEG for complex 24-bit images.
Though I often drop UT screenshots down to dithered 8-bit, if the range of colours is limited.

Many common programs unfortunately have poor or old PNG (and MNG) CoDec, this is where tools like Irfanview and XnView will always beat the Adobe or Coral products.

XnShell and Ifanview ShellExtention are great ways to get quick access to the latest compression routines
http://www.baxbex.com/images/shoots/irfanview.html
http://www.xnview.com/en/xnshell/

Irfanview has a choice of 3 PNG implementations, the most flexible of them is "Radical Image Optimization Tool".
You can update the basic plugin with the full version.
http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/
RIOT can also make use of 3 other external CLI PNG optimisers to make the files as small as humanly possible.

BTW. Thanks Paper. Nice to see an actual MNG being used here (helps to show people they actually work)
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by Chamberly »

I already mentioned xnview. -.-
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by Dr.Flay »

I was just expanding on the use of using right-click options.
Personally I use Irfanview but thought I would include XnView for comparison and impartiality.
I could have also mentioned that RIOT is available for GIMP, but I always get it in the neck for using it ;)
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by Chamberly »

Ohh. Well thank you. lol. :)
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by EvilGrins »

Did a variant on this at the start of another screenshot thread:
http://www.birdieman.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/ ... 1347348498

Shorter version, this is a PNG:
Image

Same pic as a JPG:
Image

2nd is a lil' bit fuzzier.
http://unreal-games.livejournal.com/
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by papercoffee »

your png 691,5 KB (708.094 bytes)
your jpg 128,16 KB (131.238 bytes)

The jpg got clustered that's why it's "fuzzier"
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by EvilGrins »

papercoffee wrote:The jpg got clustered that's why it's "fuzzier"
I tend to go with my converter's default settings.
http://unreal-games.livejournal.com/
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by Dr.Flay »

EvilGrins wrote:I tend to go with my converter's default settings.
Ouch ! Depending on the software you use that may be a terrible idea (though it depends on what the image is for), and I can guarantee that you are not using maximum PNG compression (9), so they are all bigger than they can be.
subsampling.png
subsampling.png (8.75 KiB) Viewed 3760 times
Things that people overlook with JPG make the biggest difference.
If you use "Chroma Subsampling" (yes you are if you did not switch it off), it will mess with the colours.
This is why I scream every-time someone releases a texture pack of JPGs.

JPEG is perfect for the pictures posted in this thread, as quality is not an issue, but size is.
Grins your current JPG settings are fine for this.
I aim for all my images to be no bigger than 256k. Often a better idea is to scale the picture down to 800x600 or less.

Everyone that converts JPGs into 8-bit images will end up with a unique palette of 256 colours.
PNG uses an exact palette, so you can remap textures and colours almost exactly as the author intended.

BTW. Grins, here is your PNG dithered and mapped to 8-bit and now 189k :D
2679860_8-bit.png
1 final note;
Progressive JPGs save smaller, but progressive PNGs save bigger.
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by EvilGrins »

Dr.Flay wrote:BTW. Grins, here is your PNG dithered and mapped to 8-bit and now 189k :D
2679860_8-bit.png
It's so tiny!
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by papercoffee »

EvilGrins wrote:
Dr.Flay wrote:BTW. Grins, here is your PNG dithered and mapped to 8-bit and now 189k :D
2679860_8-bit.png
It's so tiny!
"Size" doesn't matter. :mrgreen:
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by EvilGrins »

papercoffee wrote:
EvilGrins wrote:
Dr.Flay wrote:BTW. Grins, here is your PNG dithered and mapped to 8-bit and now 189k :D
2679860_8-bit.png
It's so tiny!
"Size" doesn't matter. :mrgreen:
I'm sorry to hear that. Image
http://unreal-games.livejournal.com/
Image
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by abc »

Only problem with that PNG converter is it replaces all the date created information for the screenshots with the current date of the newly created files. Prevents looking back through the screenshots by chronological order. Any way to preserve or restore this information? Thanks.
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by papercoffee »

abc wrote:Only problem with that PNG converter is it replaces all the date created information for the screenshots with the current date of the newly created files. Prevents looking back through the screenshots by chronological order. Any way to preserve or restore this information? Thanks.
First of all... last post was Fri Dec 06, 2013. Welcome to October 2017.
Nice unnecessary necro-bump.
Second... No, you can't prevent this. A new file gets new timestamps. But you can always save it with the same file name in the same folder as the original screenshot. Then arrange by name and they are always close by.
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by Chamberly »

I would also agree, the newly converted file could be nice if it holds previous file information especially by dates.

But since Windows OS doesn't recognize rollback version cuz it's a new file, I'd insert manually some date within the properties or sort them by month/year in a folder.

I could also say sometimes I'd get lucky if my screenshot does include dates in it on the top of the pics cuz of demo recorder, which is nice.
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Re: looking for a mod that make PNG screenshots.

Post by EvilGrins »

abc wrote:Prevents looking back through the screenshots by chronological order
Not exactly. UT' only allows for 255 screenshots in the /system folder before it stops making new ones. The files are all numbered, so even after conversion they're still in chronological order provided when you move them to another folder you keep that set of screenshots together.

Because I take a scary amount of screenshots (which I'm sure will come as a shock to many reading this) I tend to move the screenshots to other directories before converting them.
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