How to take better screenshots in Guild Wars 2?

So, you want to show off your permafrost-dyed character with a bit too many infusions on? To do that properly, we have to make sure you can take a great screenshot. Guild Wars 2 has some great settings that you can use to tweak how the camera is placed, get the graphics to look better, and even take higher quality screenshot image files.

Let's go through the steps that I use when I take screenshots and record footage for my videos.

Higher quality screenshots

Before we can take any screenshots in the game, we need to ensure that we get the highest quality screenshot we can. Normally Guild Wars 2 takes screenshots in the JPG format, but these are compressed images, which is not something we want. Instead, there is a hidden setting where you can get the game to take your screenshots in the BMP format which will have less compression. It is less compressed than a JPG and will technically be higher quality, but most people probably won't be able to spot the difference, just trust me, it's there.

To take your screenshots in the BMP format, you will have to right-click your Guild Wars 2 shortcut, click Properties and then add -bmp to the Destination field.

Now that we can take the screenshots in higher quality, let's make sure our game looks the best it can too.

Graphics settings

When you want to take a great screenshot, we don't have to care about the FPS we get in the game. This means we can put our graphic settings very high to get the best visuals of the game.

First, you want to put your game to run at the highest resolution possible, this is limited by your monitor, but the higher resolution means the screenshot will have more details.

Then, put your settings at the highest you can. Especially high textures and putting render sampling to super-sample can do a lot for the details in the screenshot.

You can turn post-processing up to the highest, but be aware that it also adds a lot of bloom, this makes things look like they are glowing. If you don't like the look of that, you can choose to turn off the post-processing and use something like reshade or Nvidia freestyle to make it look exactly how you want. How to use those are a guide for another time though.

Camera settings

When taking a screenshot you want to get a proper camera placement. Especially when you take a screenshot of your character you want to make sure, that the camera is close enough to properly show all the details of your armor and your weapons. Luckily Guild Wars 2 has some great settings for this.

Open the general options in the game by pressing F11 and scroll down to the camera settings.

Here we got a lot of control over how your camera works and more specifically, how it is positioned, which is what we will focus on in this guide.

The first 2 settings you want to adjust will be Vertical Position Near and Far. These decide how far up your camera is placed from the ground. To keep it simple, then if you're zoomed in very close, the near setting will have a bigger impact than the far setting and when you're zoomed far out, then the far setting has a bigger impact than the near setting. This doesn't mean you can just adjust one of them, both of them will still have a slight impact when either zoomed fully in or out. Try to play around with them a bit to see what works for you. For character screenshots, I will usually put both of them on the lowest possible value.

In tandem with the Near and Far settings we want to look at the toggle Adjust Camera to Character Height that is found just above the Reset Defaults button. If this is turned off, then the default position for the camera will be a standardized minimum height for all races in the game, but turning it on can help to get your own character vertically centered on the screen.

Field of view is the next setting and it determines how many degrees around you, that the camera can see. This might sound technical, but by adjusting this, we can use it almost as a zoom, to get closer to the subject we're taking a screenshot of. This works as a great way to get a better view of a lot of details of your own and other characters.

The last of the camera settings we want to play around with is Horizontal Position. This will allow you to offset the camera to either the left or the right side. A screenshot where our subject is simply in the center can be a bit boring at times, which is why the offset can help create something that looks a bit more interesting.

I highly recommend you use all these settings one by one to get a feel for how they work, such that you can adjust them on the fly to get the best camera position for your next screenshot.

Taking the screenshot

Before you can take your screenshot there is one absolute key thing to remember: You have to turn off your UI. We want to see your character, not your minimap after all.

To turn off your UI simply press ctrl + shift + h at the same time. If you're using something like ArcDPS, then you have to hide that too, which is done by clicking alt + shift + h.

Now you can take your screenshot and once you are done you simply turn on your UI and potentially ArcDPS again, by using the same key combinations one more time.

Conclusion

I hope this guide helped you get a better idea of how you can use the in-game settings to upgrade your screenshot game. If it helped you, then join our discord and share your fashion in the #shiny-fashion channel, I would love to see what you all come up with.

As always I stream Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays on twitch.tv/rediche.

Now let's see some screenshots.