Screenshots on EQ2i may range from extremely fun to extremely useful to players. An example of an extremely useful screenshot is a hard-to-see or hard-to-recognize very small quest object that isn't tabable . However, to make the most of screenshots, there are some guidelines as how to do them.

Think of what you are trying to shoot Edit

Before you take a screenshot, try to nail your target down. What are you trying to show and how are you trying to help other people?

Usually, the best screenshots show one specific thing you're trying to illustrate, and they show that thing only and nothing else if at all possible. This leads us to a few guidelines.

Avoid battles Edit

Generally, the worst place to take screenshots is in the middle of a battle. There are two notable exceptions:

1. If there's some specific event in the battle and there's no other way to point it out, you may want to crop it very tight and leave everything else out.
2. If you're in a high-end raid zone and there's no way to avoid aggro, there may be no other picture available of an NPC. Even then, try to take as clear a shot as you can.

Avoid roaming players and NPCs Edit

If you're in a public place and trying to frame a NPC or a location, try and wait around until other people are not around. This way you can show your main target much better.

Frame it and zoom Edit

Like with any photograph you would take, you should think of the framing and zooming. To put it simply, just try to make the target as big as possible by zooming to it, and try to frame it to the center of your screen. While a giant's toe may be a very interesting object, you may want to shoot the whole giant if the toe's still connected to it!

Finally, you should get rid of extra windows that don't contribute to your shot.

Check your display quality settings Edit

Your display quality settings will affect your screenshots. It is recommended that you check "Balanced" (or higher quality) preset from your Display Performance Options. This option may be found from your Options window (usually bound to the Alt-O key), under the Display menu and further under the Performance submenu.

Checking "Balanced" or higher quality will tune the more specific display settings for you; in general, you shouldn't worry about the specific settings unless you're a very advanced user.

Texture quality settings may also be set with the slash commands

/cl_textureshrink 0
/cl_charactertextureshrink 0

These may also be bound to a macro; see below.

Check your color profile Edit

Under Display Color Correction Options, you may check your Overall Gamma, Contrast and Brightness. Often, these are best left as defaults, since that is what most players will have them at anyways. If you feel your screen is very dark and it's hard to figure out the target of your screenshot, check out your Gamma, Contrast and Brightness settings. Both too dark and too light screenshots may be a problem.

Turn off Alternate Models Edit

Turn off Alternate Models (also called "SOGA graphics"). You can do this by:

1. Type /soga_models off in your Chat window (or type it in a macro and execute the macro)
2. From your Options window, in the Alternate Models submenu, click on the "Turn of all models" button.

Alternate Models will greatly alter the look of player and non-player characters.

If you spot any old screenshots with SOGA models turned on, please tag the image with {{soga}}.

Get rid of extra windows Edit

Oftentimes, you want to take a screenshot of the whole screen or a very large part of it, and you may have a window or even several windows blocking the view. Since those windows may include irrelevant or private/confidential information, it's a very good idea to get rid of them before making a screenshot you can post on Wikia. There are two ways you can go here to get rid of the extra windows.

Use Next UI Mode Edit

There are three UI modes in Everquest II: transparent, opaque and no-windows mode. By default, you toggle the next UI mode by pressing the F10 key. No-windows mode is best for taking screenshots, unless you want to have titles and names on top of NPC or PC heads.

Toggle off all windows Edit

The problem with the no-windows UI mode is that it also hides things like NPC and player names, titles and the like from top of their heads where they usually appear. If you're unhappy with this, you might simply want to hide all of your windows.

To hide all of your windows, you can use the default toggles - See the Controls menu on your Options window, and, further, the Window Keys submenu to see how to hide your windows). The default is the F10 key, which cycles through transparent windows, opaque windows, and no windows.

An alternative is to use slash commands . Slash commands can be typed from your chat window preceded by a slash. Their main benefit is that you can enter them as macro commands or type them in a file and then call the commands in the file file from a macro or your chat window.

Using a file macro to hide all of your windows Edit

One typical configuration to hide all of your windows could be as follows:

First, make a file, called C:\Program Files\Sony\Everquest II\macros\hide_windows.txt (for example). In the file, enter the following commands:

hide_window MainHUD.Character
hide_window MainHUD.Player
hide_window MainHUD.Target
hide_window MainHUD.ImpliedTarget
hide_window MainHUD.ConnectionStats
hide_window Journals.ActiveQuest
hide_window MainHUD.GroupMembers
togglechat
hide_window MainHUD.DetrimentalEffects
hide_window MainHUD.Maintained
hide_window MainHUD.Effects
hide_window MainHUD.Clock
hide_window MainHUD.Experience
hide_window MainHUD.Compass
hide_window MainHUD.Pet
hide_window MainHUD.StartButton

After this,

1. Make a macro that executes the command /do_files_command C:\Program Files\Sony\Everquest II\macros\hide_windows.txt
2. Drag the macro to your hotkey bar if you like.
3. Execute the macro to hide most of the typical windows you may have on your screen. You will need to manually hide your hotkey bar (Alt-H is a common key binding for this). You will also need to drag your Chat Window off-screen or nearly off-screen. The Chat Window will always reappear when you take your screenshot to tell you that is's taking a screenshot.

Using a file macro to show all of your windows again Edit

To get your windows to show again, make a file that might be called C:\Program Files\Sony\Everquest II\macros\show_windows.txt (for example)

show_window MainHUD.Character
show_window MainHUD.Player
show_window MainHUD.Target
show_window MainHUD.ImpliedTarget
show_window MainHUD.ConnectionStats
show_window Journals.ActiveQuest
show_window MainHUD.GroupMembers
togglechat
show_window MainHUD.DetrimentalEffects
show_window MainHUD.Maintained
show_window MainHUD.Effects
show_window MainHUD.Clock
show_window MainHUD.Experience
show_window MainHUD.Compass
show_window MainHUD.Pet
show_window MainHUD.StartButton

After this,

1. Make a macro that executes the command /do_files_command C:\Program Files\Sony\Everquest II\macros\show_windows.txt
2. Execute the macro.
3. Manually toggle your hotkey bar again.
4. Drag the show windows macro to your hotkey bar if you like.
5. Drag your main chat window back on-screen.

Check your Screen Shot settings Edit

You may take screenshots either as JPG files or as Truevision TGA files . JPEG format is good enough for most uses and makes much smaller images, but every time you save a JPEG file, it compresses the image and makes it lose some information. The amount of information that is lost is handled by the JPEG quality or compression .

It is recommended that you take the in-game screenshot with Quality 100 (See User Interface menu in the Options Windows, and, further, the Screen Shot submenu) and only compress it a bit when editing it before sending it to Wikia. (See next chapter.)

Edit your image Edit

Before sending your screen shot to Wikia, you will want to make sure it is cropped to only include the relevant information. This means you should use a graphics editor . Recommending a graphics editor is outside the scope of this help article; the initial contributor of the article uses GIMP .

Submit your image Edit

To submit your image to Wikia, please use the upload page or multiple upload page . Help pages for uploading images exist on Wikimedia Commons.

It is very much recommended that you include a Summary that summarizes what your image is about. It is required that you use the Licensing drop-down menu to tag your uploaded images with the respective copyright !

Please don't sign your shots, however. The history page will show the credit.

Use your image Edit

To place an image on a page, edit the page you want to place the image on, and see the help page on MediaWiki HandBook for further instructions. A quick reference to the image display syntax is also available.