Note: This information applies only to latest version of each emulator. Make sure you acquire the latest version.

  import tmp.png

If you use KDE, there is a program which comes with most KDE installs called KSnapshot. It can take images from any window or area, take images on a timer, and remove window decorations automatically. Simply open it, and have it take a snapshot of the active window with the remove decorations box checked.

The Gimp can also take screenshots (File -> Create -> Screenshot). Select "take screenshot of a single window" and uncheck "include window decoration".

If your snapshots contains menubars and other irrelevant things, use an image manipulation program such as The GIMP to remove them.

Note that the programs mentioned in this chapter can be used in Windows too.

It is suggested that you dump the AVI to a lossless RGB based codec (Windows users can use the CamStudio or Lagarith codecs, frequently used by our encoders; FFV1 can also be used if set to the BGR32 colorspace) and open the file in any player that can show the video in its original native resolution (for Windows users, VirtualDub is suggested). Find a frame that is publishable quality, screencap the screen (or the frame if the player supports it), crop the result properly and save it as a PNG in your favorite image editor.

If you are going to optimise your screenshot, however, leave it as a BMP; PNGOUT is perfectly capable of reading BMP files (see below).

Admin-level users have an option to override these resolution limits (for games that have odd resolutions, for multi-runs, etc...)

We generally prefer lossless screenshots, and the below techniques are usually sufficient to achieve file sizes well within the target range. For some systems (particularly 3D systems such as N64 and PSX) the images may be more complex than this; in those cases, we accept a certain degree of lossiness in screenshots. Historically, this has been in the form of JPEG screenshots saved with no subsampling and as high a quality setting as can be used while staying within that limit; more recently there has been an effort to use tools such as Animmerger to reduce the colour palette of the image while still preserving the benefits of PNG as an image format. It is recommended that you contact a publisher before resorting to these means.

General

Windows

Linux

  #!/bin/bash

  name=${1%.*}
  cp $name.png $name-best.png
  optipng $name-best.png
  for ((i=1; i<=$2; i++))
  do
    pngout -r -y $name.png $name-trial.png
    DeflOpt $name-trial.png
    du --bytes $name-best.png $name-trial.png | sort -n | awk 'BEGIN {ORS=" "} {print $2}' | xargs cp
  done

JPG

3D and other modern games usually have too complicated picture to fit into the 45kB limit allocated for a publication screenshot. This forces us to use JPG format instead of PNG, but still do some work to minimize the color loss.

Load up the image in GIMP, export it to JPEG. Then set preview to on, chroma to 4:4:4 and DCT to floating-point and adjust the quality (usually to the maximum that gives under 45kB).

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Screenshots last edited by feos on 2013-04-23 14:18:21
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