The Oracle - Screen Captures

I've received a lot of mail asking how one can take a screen shot from the Realm. There are a couple of ways of doing it but before we get to them you should be aware that all images from the game are the property of Codemasters, protected by international copyright law. This doesn't mean you cannot use them, Codemasters has been very generous in allowing fair usage. However, it does mean you ought not abuse the privilege. If you are in doubt about how Codemasters would feel about how you are using their material I urge you to contact them and ask their permission prior to making the image public.

Screen Capture - Method One: Screen Capture Programs

My preference for capturing a screen shot, from the Realm or from any other source, is to use a screen capture program. Using such a program provides greater flexibility and control than is available with Method Two. There are dozens of shareware and freeware screen capture programs floating around on the net. A quick visit to the Ziff-Davis site, ZDNet, should provide you with several choices. I use either the screen capture program included with the shareware graphics editor Paint Shop Pro (the program I use to make all the maps) or the one included with Corel Photo-Paint (the graphics editor I use for making fancier images such as the monster logos on the bestiary pages). You will need a decent graphics editor to process the screen capture image so using a capture program included with your editor is a natural choice.

The precise manner in which these screen capture programs operate varies but, in general, you will:

Load the capture program.
Set the configuration, such as what area will be captured and what hot key will initiate the capture.
Activate it. Usually they auto-minimize and then wait until you hit the hot key.
Perform the capture. Hit the hot key. You may or may not be required to perform some additional, such as designating the area to be captured, depending on how you have the program configured. I tend to prefer to capture only that area of the screen in which I am interested, therefore I need to designate the area. Many people prefer to simply grab the entire window and no action on their part is require in this step.
Save the image to a file. Again, this may or may not require input from you, depending on the program you are using and how you have it configured. Select the file format for your screen capture carefully, see the section File Formats below.

One important consideration is the color depth of the capture. Color depth is the number of colors included in the image. The possibilities range from 2 (black and white) to several million. A screen capture can only grab an image with a color depth equal to what your monitor is displaying. Color depth is important in image processing, the higher the depth, the more control you have. If you have ever noticed screen captures that have color spots, most often seen on the faces of the toons, you have seen the effect of capturing the shot at too low a color depth. Low color depth forces the capture program to perform color averaging and that is what leads to spots. Higher color depth provides cleaner images.

Setting the Color Depth

Right clicking on the Windows background pops up a Display Properties menu. Here you can set the color depth of your monitor. What color depths are available to you depends on your graphics adapter (card) and your monitor but the full set of choices available is:

16 color
256 color
High Color (16 bit)
True Color (24 bit)
True Color (32 bit)

The Realm is a 256 color game (last I knew anyway, I seem to recall something about the color depth having been raised in version 3.x). Regardless, I recommend capturing images in High Color. The additional colors available can avoid any palette problems that occur when switching between graphics editors, something that frequently occurs when someone else works on your images. True color (24 or 32 bit) would be even better but the additional file size required and additional resources necessary to process the image do not, in my opinion, warrant the added colors available. If my recollection of a color depth increase with the introduction of Realm 3.x is correct then High Color mode is essential, not optional.

Screen Capture - Method Two: Standard Windows Programs

Press the print screen key (labeled Prnt Scrn or Print Screen, position on the keyboard varies but is typically found on the upper right near the function keys).
Open Windows' Paint (typically installed under Start/Programs/Accessories in Windows).
Select Edit and choose Paste. The captured image will appear.
Select File and choose Save As. Windows' Paint only allows saving images in BMP format. You will need to get another graphics editor or a graphics file format conversion program to convert the image to a format usable to web browsers. If you are only interested in taking snapshots to preserve memories Windows' Paint is sufficient.

File Formats

GIF - Maximum of 256 colors. A compressed file format that reduces file size while maintaining good image integrity. For most web images this is the file format of choice. Note that you will need to reduce the color depth of your image prior to saving to this format if the image contains more than 256 colors. All maps I have created for the Realm are in this format.
JPG - A variably compressed file format allowing 16 million colors (High Color). Most graphics editors allow you to adjust the compression ratio. The higher the compression, the smaller the file. However there is an image quality trade-off here, the higher the compression the more color bleeding and image degradation. A compression of 10-15% is recommended. Use this format on your web page only for images that require the extra color depth.
BMP - An uncompressed file format that allows all the colors available (True Color). This results in large file sizes. Most web browsers do not read BMPs. This is the format I recommend for initially saving your screen capture. After you have worked on the image, removing any backgrounds, adding elements, altering features, etc. you can convert to one of the above formats for use on your web page.

Image Processing

This is a huge topic to discuss so I'll restrict my comments to some important generalizations.

Learn Your Graphics Editor - Play around with it. Find out what each of the tools it offers does and how to employ them. For most applications I recommend Paint Shop Pro, it has a fine set of standard tools and can save files in all the popular formats. It is also simple enough to avoid the confusion more robust graphics editors frequently generate.
Keep Only What You Need - Spare your viewers unnecessary clutter and download time. If the background on the image isn't important, remove it. A single solid color background can greatly reduce the file size and thereby limit the amount of time necessary to transfer the image. The GIF format allows you to select a color as transparent, by setting anything you do not wish to show to this color you can present your images with your web page's background showing through.
Keep Some Space - An image looks better if there is some space left between the subject and edge of the picture. Don't crop your image too close to the subject. On the other hand, don't keep too much blank space either. Do this even if you will be using a transparent background to provide for good spacing between the image and anything else on the page.
Minimize the File Size - Check the image palette. Decrease the image's color depth to the smallest number that will cover the included colors. Many images captured from the Realm, such as toon portraits, require only 16 colors. With JPGs choose your compression factor carefully (around 90% is pretty standard, going lower than that often results in compression desortions), you want the file size as small as possible but avoid image quality degradation.
Watch The Palette With GIFs - A palette is the colors stored with an image. Images do not necessarily contain the same colors. Since GIFs are restricted to a maximum of 256 colors, maintaining the palette is important. If you have ever received a GIF from someone and tried pasting it into another GIF and found there were spots all over the pasted image, you have encountered a palette problem. You see this all the time on the web. What occurred was a color adjustment necessary to convert the palette of the image being pasted to the palette of the receiving file. This is most often accomplished by a process called dithering. To avoid the palette problem, first convert the file you into which you will be pasting the image to High or True Color, do the paste, and then convert back to 256 colors for saving as a GIF.

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