Butoden's Photoshop-Your-Screenshots Guide

Hello all I have made a little guide for you all to make a cool screenshot even cooler by tweaking it a bit in PHOTOSHOP!! Wooooo, yes no joke. Metal will look more like metal and the whole screen will look more real (Real? ) So here is what you for those who have Photoshop and have a little knowledge:

- Make nice screenshot ingame
- Open nice screenshot in Photoshop
- Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen
- Duplicate Layer
- Select the Duplicate Layer (make sure it's 'on top' of the sharpened layer )
- Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur 1.5 on the Duplicate Layer
- Put the Duplicate Layer as a Linear Dodge or Screen, whatever you think looks nicer
- Go back to the Sharpened Layer (base layer )
- Use the Blur Tool to blur the background (like in this screenshot the uhm house, the hills, the trees, the ground, the fence. They are all not sharp at all as you can see, this creates an effect of it being far away and u can't see it very well. )
- Use the blur tool again but this time to remove the sharp edges at the people. You can see these sharp edges at the head and weapon and armor and stuff, it looks UGLY!! So fix it with a small blur here and there so it looks nice and round

- Okay now uhm stay on your sharpened layer or base layer whatever you want to call it and you do this:
Image > Adjustments > Auto Levels
Image > Adjustments > Auto Contrast
Image > Adjustments > Auto Color

This shud tune the colors a little, if you dont like how it ended up then DONT DO IT! ;p

- Next step hokay is uhm make a new layer, put it on top, select all and then add a border. Make this border I dunno. 5 or something. I used 22 cuz I wanted to get rid of the little fraps icon in the top right corner (its still there though ) and then you should paint this with the pencil tool and make a nice border. I prefer a black one cuz it's easy and well enuff said!!

- Okay next is uhm go to the base layer / sharpened layer and add a little grain. Contrast 50 and Ammount 5 or 7 or so , very little. If u dont like this then dont do it. I did! SO now u have a cool screenshot. You can sign it with your name like me ( ~Butoden ). Looks really nice doesn't it? Yeah it's a nice font. I forgot the name. If you want it too then google it : Shelman is the name of the font.

Okay then save ur piccie and voila. If this guide was not clear enough on some things then PM me your problem or speak to me about it on Ventrilo or MSN or ingame or send me an email or post it here (not a good idea ) and I will try to fix it & make it more clear in the guide!!

There are way more tricks and tweaks to enhance the screenshots but these are easy to remember, easy to understand hopefully and I like the effects, it's direct and it's not too difficult, so even a photoshop noob like me can understand and explain!!

Quote :

In the future I will probably make screenshots of every step in photoshop but right now i am too lazy + torrents downloading + slow pc after playing l2 for too long etc. etc. + too lazy oh wait already said that

Here are a few examples of me and my photoshop work. This is all long time ago. Anyway look at these


^ normal Image
v photoshopped Image


Hacks? Cheats? Bugs? No ! It is... Photoshop!!! Hahahahaha ... okay some more screens, click to see full size:




Okay if you wanna post your edited screenies here then that would be nice to see for all ya?

they look hot!111

holy shit, this focus effect looks so awesome! the bd in front of medicpack and the first and the third of the smaller ones are just .. shiat i love them ^^

Nice work Butoden...Thank you for the tips!

I like the BD too (which I think looks great with the heavy armor)
Well you see on the BD's armor a glimse of light as if the sun has been reflected on it, well I will explain how to do that in the weekend and I will also include screenshots then in Photoshop for every step, so u see how it all works cuz it is still a little rough guide atm.