1

Tema: Low-res screenshots

So Recap, first of all I want to say I am sorry for what happened in my forum the other day. I should have checked the situation earlier -- and I would have -- but I had no idea NFG would be so aggressive and unreasonable. Normally he is very reasonable, but your insistence on the whole scanline thing seems to have awoken some primal assholic instinct in him, and after you left it took me like two whole fucking pages to explain to him why he was being an asshole.

So anyway, I am very much determined to make a new template for my reviews, using screenshots like yours. So if you are still willing to help me do this, I am all ready. Only problem is the Alien Skin Xenofex 2 plug-in, which does not seem to work with IrfanView. I have downloaded IrfanView and set it up, as well as its plug-ins, but according to this page:

http://www.alienskin.com/xx2/xx2_requirements.html

the Alien Skin Xenofex 2 plug-in only works with certain programs (some of which I do have, actually).

So what am I doing wrong here?

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Re: Low-res screenshots

The first subject is not something that I'd like to talk about in here, so I'll mail you later or something. LOL at "insistence", anyhow.

Xenofex 2 is a Photoshop plug-in, and Irfan View can use any of those plug-in's. I can't recall exactly how it was, but it had to do with letting Irfan View know which folder Xenofex 2 is installed in, I guess. From the help tool:

8BF_FILTERS:    allows IrfanView to load Adobe Photoshop 8BF filters. Note: this PlugIn may require additional system DLLs (check "i_plugins.txt" for details).

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3 (editado por icycalm 14-01-2008 03:05:53)

Re: Low-res screenshots

Okay, I downloaded a trial version of Xenofex 2, which lasts for 30 days (the licence costs $130!), and installed it to work both with Photoshop and in a separate folder. I also got the extra DLLs for the 8BF_FILTERS thingy, and installed them. The problem is that I can't find how to use the 8BF_FILTERS plug-in. I went through all of Irfan's menus but couldn't find any option to use that plug-in (which would presumably allow me to tell Irfan the exact location of Xenofex 2).

I also looked through a couple of .txt files, but no luck.

I'll try again tomorrow. Let me know if you think of something in the meantime.

4

Re: Low-res screenshots

Get this:

irfanview_plugins_395

install them and then check it out.





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5

Re: Low-res screenshots

I've already installed a newer version (irfanview_plugins_410_setup.exe). I'll spend some time later today going carefully through all the menus and the help file. I should be able to figure it out.

6

Re: Low-res screenshots

So I just went carefully through all the "properties/settings", and did not manage to find any option to tell IrfanView to use Photosop plugins. There is even a "PlugIns" tab, but it's useless.

Then I checked the "Installed PlugIns..." option under the "Help" menu, which gives you a list of all the installed plug-ins, and their location. So I went to that location and copied the Xenofex 2 DLL and 8BF files, then restarted IrfanView, and when I checked the "Installed PlugIns..." option again I saw the following, right at the very bottom of the list of installed plug-ins:

PlugIn                                                  Version            Info/Formats
XENOFEX 2 DEMO CORE.DLL                  Unknown          Unknown

Does that mean that I have installed it now? How do I use it to make sure it's working?

I would be very surprised if it worked since -- apart from the 2 files I copied -- all the rest of the Xenofex 2 files are in the separate folder where I installed it, and IrfanView does not seem to know its location.

7

Re: Low-res screenshots

I indeed would delete those files you manually pasted there...


This is how it works once you have it installed:

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/8412/irfanrf2.jpg

Let me know if you can open that.

8

Re: Low-res screenshots

Man. I don't know if I am the one who is stupid, or the people who made this program. See, as long as I had not opened a file all those option menus were "grayed out", so I could not click on them. But when I opened a random image they all became available, and I was able to use the options you showed me in your last post to tell IrfanView where to find the Xenofex 2 folder.

So I am all set! Next step whenever you are ready.

9

Re: Low-res screenshots

Sounds like it's my fault, actually. I assumed you'd know Irfan View was, more than anything, an image viewer, hence it needs an image to operate. The picture posted was quite self-explanatory, anyhow!

The tutorial:

1. Run your emulator at a display resolution which doubles the resolution of the emulated game. For instance, a SFC game will be generally 256 x 224. You must turn it into 512 x 448. Of course, that's only possible in a windowed (non full-screen) mode. A full-screen mode which DOESN'T stretch the picture (at least, vertically) would also work (notice the actual resolution mode used by your video-card here is of 640 x 480, and some lines will be blank lines). You also must enable 50% scanlines (only a few emulators don't have this option, so for those cases, ask me later, if you happen to find them).

2. Load the game and exit the emulator.

3. Open Irfan View (that means "open an image file with Irfan View") and press "C". This opens the capture setup window. Make your chose. You can even select an automatic capturing mode.

4. Don't close Irfan View and go back to your emulator. Play the game and take the snapshots as you selected.

5. Open one of the snapshots in your HD with Irfan View. Make sure the snapshot is border-free. Go to the Adobe 8BF filters menu and select "Television". You only need to add curvature. Something between 4~8 will serve. Notice you could also add "scanlines" from there, and even some other CRT effects. OK and Exit.

6. Resize the image's width via the Image menu in order to get a 4 : 3 aspect ratio (or whichever suits better for the page layout). Do it with a "resample" method like Lanczos Filter.

7. Let's add some blur now. Go to Image, Effects, Blur.

8. Time to Enhance Colors also from the Image menu. Modify the color balance, contrast and saturation as you prefer. This is a very important phase in the process, so be careful. Its point is to reintegrate the picture its original colors, given that both, the scanlines and the blur darkened it a lot.

9. Add some more blur if necessary, save your changes and there you have it.

10 (editado por icycalm 22-01-2008 03:37:17)

Re: Low-res screenshots

So I've been messing around with Irfan View and a couple of emulators these past few days and I've got a ton of questions. Some of them are of a theoretical nature while others are more practical, but I must also confess that several of your instructions don't quite make sense to me at this point. I am hoping you won't mind explaining to me the reasoning behind your choices.

I guess my number one question would be this: Why take a capture of the emulator window with Irfan View instead of saving the screenshot with the emulator and THEN working on it? The only possible answer I've been able to give is that you prefer the emulator adding the scanlines instead of an external application... However, my experience with screen-capturing applications is that they degrade the image quality. Isn't the image I get from capturing using Irfan View worse than the emulator's native output? Irfan View seems to save in .bmp format, so perhaps not...

But the problem here seems to be that many emulators do not allow me to resize a window to exactly twice the size of the original resolution. I was able to use ZSNES with no problems as you instructed me, but I had no such luck with MAME32. In MAME32 I can only get a window the size of each game's original resolution, but resizing is done manually by using the mouse and enlarging the window, and if I do that I have no clue when I've exactly doubled the screen size. Kega Fusion allows me 640x480 in windowed mode, but that is not the correct doubled resolution for any Mega Drive games. And with ePSX I wouldn't even know where to begin -- the video options in that emulator are so complicated they give me a headache. Not to mention that -- apart from MAME, which tells you each game's native res -- I wouldn't know how to figure out the native res for most games running on other emulators. I mean, how do you know at what res a Super Famicom game runs? I am sure there must be a way to see this; I just don't know it yet.

Recap escribió:

Open one of the snapshots in your HD with Irfan View. Make sure the snapshot is border-free.

Since I was only able to use your tutorial with ZSNES, my snapshot was 512 x 448 so there were no added borders. Still the game ITSELF (R-Type III) has black borders at the top and bottom. Am I supposed to crop those off?

Recap escribió:

Go to the Adobe 8BF filters menu and select "Television". You only need to add curvature. Something between 4~8 will serve.

What I found strange about this menu is that, by default (i.e. the first time you click on it) it adds a whole load of effects to the image. Here they are:

Scanline Strength
Scanline Thickness (pixels)
Vertical Shift
Curvature
Static
Ghost Strength
Ghost Offset
Breakup

All these sliders were at random values and I had to set them all to zero. Then I selected 8 for curvature.

Is this what I should be doing? All the sliders at zero except curvature?

And do you have any idea what the "Random Seed" option is at the bottom? I try to set it to 0 but it automatically resets to 1 when I exit the menu and re-enter it.

Also, why are you choosing such a low curvature number? I was always wondering about that. I know that different monitors have different curvatures and all, but the curvature you are adding is so imperceptible you might as well not bother, no?

Recap escribió:

6. Resize the image's width via the Image menu in order to get a 4 : 3 aspect ratio (or whichever suits better for the page layout). Do it with a "resample" method like Lanczos Filter.

This is where I got stuck. The Resize/Resample menu has no option for automatic resizing to 4 : 3 aspect ratio. I have to set the size manually by entering pixel numbers... Frankly, I am completely lost here.

Recap escribió:

7. Let's add some blur now. Go to Image, Effects, Blur.

Here I have to ask: Do you really add blur to your screenshots? They look crystal-clear to me... And if you do add blur, do you really think it's necessary/desirable? I guess you are doing it to get closer to what you'd see on a real monitor?

Recap escribió:

8. Time to Enhance Colors also from the Image menu. Modify the color balance, contrast and saturation as you prefer. This is a very important phase in the process, so be careful. Its point is to reintegrate the picture its original colors, given that both, the scanlines and the blur darkened it a lot.

Again, I am completely lost here. So lost that I feel like a complete moron. I mean, why mess with the colors? You say that we darkened its "original colors" by adding scanlines, but I don't understand how this works. Scanlines are just lines added between the regular lines, they are not added on top of the regular lines. So how did we darken the image?

Besides, the Enhance Color menus scares the hell out of me. How am I supposed to figure out the best positions of all those random sliders? I don't even have a clue as to what I should be aiming for.

Recap escribió:

9. Add some more blur if necessary, save your changes and there you have it.

How do I tell if more blur is necessary?



So anyway, here's one of my tries:


http://misc.insomnia.ac/random/irfanview_example_1.bmp


This is 512 x 448 including the game's own borders, with a curvature of 8 and one dose of blur. I have not resized the image to 4 : 3 because I couldn't figure out how to do it, and I have not messed around with the colors because I wouldn't know where to start.


So... let me know what you think about all this... It sure is a more complicated business than I would have imagined. (I am still loving the results, of course!)

11

Re: Low-res screenshots

Firstly -- don't panic. You'll soon realize all these problems you've got there are quite silly, trust me.


icycalm escribió:

Why take a capture of the emulator window with Irfan View instead of saving the screenshot with the emulator and THEN working on it? The only possible answer I've been able to give is that you prefer the emulator adding the scanlines instead of an external application...

Pretty much.


However, my experience with screen-capturing applications is that they degrade the image quality. Isn't the image I get from capturing using Irfan View worse than the emulator's native output? Irfan View seems to save in .bmp format, so perhaps not...

You answered yourself. You could even save it in .PNG and get the very same quality. I'd of course suggest you to do that.



But the problem here seems to be that many emulators do not allow me to resize a window to exactly twice the size of the original resolution. I was able to use ZSNES with no problems as you instructed me, but I had no such luck with MAME32. In MAME32 I can only get a window the size of each game's original resolution, but resizing is done manually by using the mouse and enlarging the window, and if I do that I have no clue when I've exactly doubled the screen size. Kega Fusion allows me 640x480 in windowed mode, but that is not the correct doubled resolution for any Mega Drive games. And with ePSX I wouldn't even know where to begin -- the video options in that emulator are so complicated they give me a headache. Not to mention that -- apart from MAME, which tells you each game's native res -- I wouldn't know how to figure out the native res for most games running on other emulators. I mean, how do you know at what res a Super Famicom game runs? I am sure there must be a way to see this; I just don't know it yet.

Seems I wasn't clear enough. With "display resolution" I meant the display for the game's graphics, not the application's. Forget windowed modes; I think it'll be easier for you if you take the full-screen route. In this mode, you must force the emulator, whichever it is, to do three things when it runs the game:

- To change to Windows' 640 x 480 mode.

- To preserve the exact "line-double" resolution for the game's display (check again the example with the standard SFC game I mentioned). That implies a) no "stretch to fill the screen" options enabled at all, b) some black borders displayed on screen (unless the game's native resolution was of 320 x 240, as it's obvious).

- To use 50% scanlines (and only that).




Since I was only able to use your tutorial with ZSNES, my snapshot was 512 x 448 so there were no added borders. Still the game ITSELF (R-Type III) has black borders at the top and bottom. Am I supposed to crop those off?

Well, that's up to you. If in that case there were borders, then the game didn't have "full-screen graphics", hence I'd say the borders should be in the snapshots. Check Postback's Edo no Kiba article.





All these sliders were at random values and I had to set them all to zero. Then I selected 8 for curvature.

Is this what I should be doing? All the sliders at zero except curvature?

Yep. But try it out and take whatever you happen to like more.




And do you have any idea what the "Random Seed" option is at the bottom?

It refers to the filters' pattern applied. Ignore it for the better.




Also, why are you choosing such a low curvature number? I was always wondering about that. I know that different monitors have different curvatures and all, but the curvature you are adding is so imperceptible you might as well not bother, no?

http://postback.geedorah.com/revisiones/archivos_de_web/DEgg!_s000.png

"Imperceptible"?




This is where I got stuck. The Resize/Resample menu has no option for automatic resizing to 4 : 3 aspect ratio. I have to set the size manually by entering pixel numbers... Frankly, I am completely lost here.

Do it manually! That's something you'll be doing without worries once you get some experience and have the page layout.




Here I have to ask: Do you really add blur to your screenshots?

Sure!



They look crystal-clear to me... And if you do add blur, do you really think it's necessary/desirable?

If I thought it isn't, do you really think I'd do it?




I guess you are doing it to get closer to what you'd see on a real monitor?

Yep.




Again, I am completely lost here. So lost that I feel like a complete moron. I mean, why mess with the colors? You say that we darkened its "original colors" by adding scanlines, but I don't understand how this works. Scanlines are just lines added between the regular lines, they are not added on top of the regular lines. So how did we darken the image?

'Cause fake scanlines and real scanlines are actually two very different things. You're used to RGB monitors, so you should know that. I'm, more or less, explaining it in detail in a forthcoming article, anyway, so let's leave it at that for now.




Besides, the Enhance Color menus scares the hell out of me. How am I supposed to figure out the best positions of all those random sliders? I don't even have a clue as to what I should be aiming for.

Hum... Practice. And rely in your eyes.



How do I tell if more blur is necessary?

See above.



So anyway, here's one of my tries:

With everything you skipped:

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/5503/irfanviewexample1hb5.png

Still, that picture fails at something... The emulator's scanlines? I'm not sure. Compare it with these:

http://postback.geedorah.com/revisiones … lay_01.htm

12

Re: Low-res screenshots

Uhh, if I gave you a couple (6) screens could you do me a favor and convert them to CRT style?  I don't think I can do this right now.

13

Re: Low-res screenshots

Sure. Better if they're already line-doubled and got the own emulator's scanlines (50%), in case.








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14 (editado por JoshF 11-06-2008 07:55:54)

Re: Low-res screenshots

Sorry, I just have the raw captures.

It took me a while to get the 2P screens.  It had to set each player up a little at a time and use weird button configs to control them.  I noticed you have a lot of muli-player screens, is this how you do it or do you have friends to help out?

15

Re: Low-res screenshots

Can't download from that URL.

I remember the days when I got help there, but it was long ago. I use your painful workaround these days too. I have a never finishing Lightbringer review for a year now just for this reason.







.

16

Re: Low-res screenshots

You could always find some random guy in Kaillera, if you know how to port forward.

I don't know why the file wouldn't work, it had the right permissions.  Here are the images.

http://saturn.classicgaming.gamespy.com/content/1.pnghttp://saturn.classicgaming.gamespy.com/content/2.png
http://saturn.classicgaming.gamespy.com/content/3.pnghttp://saturn.classicgaming.gamespy.com/content/4.png
http://saturn.classicgaming.gamespy.com/content/5.pnghttp://saturn.classicgaming.gamespy.com/content/6.png

17

Re: Low-res screenshots

I don't like the result here. I'd need screenshots with the emulator's scanlines for better quality, as I told you. Let me know if you want they all like this sample or if you prefer to redo the whole thing again. Also, if you like the look of Pulstar's screens here or the one of Gekka no Kenshi's, for instance.

http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/5528/3akl3.png

18

Re: Low-res screenshots

I will need to check on another moniter, the CRT one I'm using makes the scanlines hard to see.  I remember you adding scanlines to an image NFG posted and it didn't look bad.

It would be a pain to try and get some of those again (mainly the stage 2 boss screen) so I don't think I want to do that.  Best I could do is use Paintshop's blind effect at 1 pixel and 50% transparency but I'm guessing you already use a similar technique.

19

Re: Low-res screenshots

Here's one with a more evident scanlines effect. That's why I was asking you about the examples here. The truth is there's not a universal way.

http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/7176/3bqv4.png

20

Re: Low-res screenshots

That's awesome.  I like that style the best.

Also, could you replace the final screen with this one:

http://saturn.classicgaming.gamespy.com/content/7.png

Next time I'll risk the malware and download a keygen somewhere so I can use your guide.

21

Re: Low-res screenshots

Here:

http://www.sendmefile.com/00633683

But believe me; "awesome" is not the word. Just "alrighty".






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Re: Low-res screenshots

Recap, I'm going to take some captures of Shatterhand now, but first I wanted to know your opinion about Nestopia's bilinear filter as an option instead of outright blurring the picture.

This is how the game looks without the filter, with 33% blur and brightness, contrast and color saturation at 16, in that order:

http://i45.tinypic.com/2580y6t.png

And this is using bilinear filtering, without blur, all sliders at the same values as before:

http://i46.tinypic.com/14xm3t.png

I also used the emulator's TV size switch rather than correcting the aspect ratio manually. What do you think?

23

Re: Low-res screenshots

Just out of curiousity given that I'm currently having a similar conversation via e-mail with Ronan from Insomnia: are you discussing this matter on Insomnia's internal forum right now and is Icycalm telling you all that he needs my approval for this stuff? If so, wouldn't it be a better idea getting me unbanned there in order to consolidate (just saying, Icycalm)?

I'm repeating here what I told Ronan before anything, since it concerns your question almost to the point of turning it irrelevant:

First off, you must know I don't actually like any scanlines simulation at this resolution range, nor even the one I got (and indeed I'm redesigning my Site in order to totally change the screens).

In other words: 640 x 480 screenshots for low-res games should be discarded since we just can't get proper results and do the games justice. This is not exactly a good photo, but we should be aiming, at least, for this result:

http://i50.tinypic.com/1zpmzbt.jpg



Said that, your first screen looks like shit, I'm afraid, while your second one, as passable as it can get at that resolution and without curvature, per-pixel edition and whatnot, I guess. The current samples at Insomnia's Shatterhand hand review are actually better accuracy-wise, since the NES was never able of outputting RGB.

Are you using Irfan View?



"I also used the emulator's TV size switch rather than correcting the aspect ratio manually. What do you think?

It apparently has a quite correct aspect ratio there, doesn't it? You do know that 4 : 3 is the number, right?

24

Re: Low-res screenshots

Pasting this here too:

http://i48.tinypic.com/97s4cx.png


It's been made by Ronan and edited by myself from an unaltered emulation screenshot using Eboshidori's models as reference. Close to perfection.

25 (editado por ChaosAngelZero 31-12-2009 00:13:33)

Re: Low-res screenshots

OK then, thank you very much for the feedback.

Indeed, I'm using IrfanView and adhering as much as possible to the method you described above, save for the curvature. And of course I know the correct AR, just was unsure if the emulator's own stretching is good enough or if I should just stretch it manually. The funny thing is, it should be at something like 597×448 rather than 576×448.