Image Quality

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Screenshot Quality Guideline: Image Quality

Possible Assessments

Approvable	TS4	TS3	TS2	Title	Description
				Image Quality external camera	Some or all of the required screenshots of this creation are pictures of a computer screen taken with an external camera, like a phone camera. To best show off your creation, please take all screenshots using your computer's built-in tools.
				Image Quality blurry/crunchy	The required screenshots for your creation are very blurry or crunchy, which makes it impossible to see this creation.
				Image Quality fisheye	The screenshots have a very heavy fisheye effect; this distortion makes it difficult to see this creation.
				No quality issues	There are no image quality issues with the required screenshots. Nice!

General Guidelines

Quality issues with screenshots can make it difficult or impossible for moderators and downloaders to see your creation clearly. This is why correcting any issues is important. :) A few of the most commonly seen issues are:

Blurry or crunchy

This can be caused by several things: Enlarging screenshots, turning compression too high or quality too low when saving images in your graphics editor, and using image formats other than JPG. Your images can be up to 2560x1440 pixels, and 1.3 MB - larger images usually mean better quality.

Never enlarge or upscale images in Photoshop or another image editor. Not only does this not improve the image quality, it actually makes it much worse, since the program fills the new pixels with "junk" information. If your screenshots are too small, the best way to fix this is to retake the screenshots, using the in-game camera tools to get closer to what you're trying to show, or in the case of TS2, an external imaging program.

Fisheye

When using the in-game camera tool, zooming out too far with the mouse wheel can cause "fisheye" distortion. Images with fisheye distortion can be very difficult to view clearly and don't give a good representation of what downloaders will see in their game.

External camera

Taking pictures of the computer screen with a phone or other external camera not only causes distortion, colour problems, and reflections, it's also unnecessary! Using a good screenshotting program or the game's built-in camera is a must for all required pictures.

Struggling to take good in-game pics?

Check out our Camera Controls tutorial to help sharpen your skills!

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Examples

External camera

This image was taken with an external source, in this case, a cell phone. There are the tell-tale computer image lines that appear when this is done, as well as a reflection of the background in the uploader's location, which is very distracting.

Blurry

In this screenshot, the image was resized to be larger. This has caused the poster to become blurry, and therefore would not be acceptable as a required screenshot.

Fish-eye

When in live mode, if you hit the Tab button on your keyboard and zoom out, you get this 'fish-eye' effect. It really is quite distracting to the viewer and does not show off your work to its utmost potential.

Good example!

This is a good example of image quality because the image is crisp and clear, was not taken with an external camera, has not been resized to be larger, and there is no fish-eye effect! :)

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