screenshots

[skiaplg]

I know this sounds stupid, but how do you take screenshots (w/out using PrtSc and going on paint)

[Ruff_Hi]

well, actually ... you have the answer right there. If you press print screen while in the game, the game puts a print screen in your mydocs\civ4\printscreen folder.

[Veovim]

I seem to remember there being an issue with layers being left off of the images in the screenshots folder (e.g. any of the advisor screens or the diplo screen could be absent from the images, and they would instead show the main map underneath). Is that still around, or am I just losing track of versions?

[Atlas]

I think that was fixed in a patch, 1.52 perphaps? Anyway my Diploscreens work fine except for my graphics card issues

[Clovis]

When I hit PrntScrn, Civ4 pops up a message, "Screenshot Failed," and does not save anything in the "screenshots" folder. I have screenshots enabled in the configuration settings, so I don't know what the problem is.

[Ruff_Hi]

do you play with civ 4 windowed? I was getting that message until I swapped back to full screen.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

When I hit PrntScrn, Civ4 pops up a message, "Screenshot Failed," and does not save anything in the "screenshots" folder.

This is strange...is there a screenshot in the clipboard, i.e. if you switch to Irfanview for example after hitting PrntScrn and try to paste the screenshot, does this work? Maybe only saving the screenshot to harddrive doesn't work, but copying it into the clipboard memory works.

If that doesn't work, you could use Irfanview (or a similar program) to capture the screen. It's a bit clumsier than using PrntScrn, but should work at least in windowed mode (maybe even in full screen, but I'm not sure about that).

-Kylearan

[Clovis]

Yes, I do run it in windowed mode.

I have been taking screenshots by pasting them into paint, so PrntScrn must be saving them to the clipboard.

I don't know what Irfanview is.

[T-hawk]

I have been taking screenshots by pasting them into paint, so PrntScrn must be saving them to the clipboard.

I don't know what Irfanview is.

That's what I've always done, in windowed mode too. I need to crop and edit the screenshots while playing; if I leave that for later I'll forget what the highlights were supposed to be. IMO, a series of uncropped full screen shots makes for difficult and dull report reading. The reader doesn't know what they're supposed to be looking at. A few full screens are warranted to periodically show an empire overview, maybe one per game age. For singular events like wonders or great people, crop the shot down to just the essentials.

Except instead of Paint I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro. It's not freeware but it came as a freebie with some graphics card a long time ago, and I know it very well.

Irfanview is a freeware graphics viewer and utility with some additional capabilities like capturing Windows screenshots and some ability to convert files between different formats.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

Irfanview is a freeware graphics viewer and utility with some additional capabilities like capturing Windows screenshots and some ability to convert files between different formats.

And, very important for CIV reporting purposes, it can also crop and resize images - so it's all I need most of the time, the only exception being when I want to add graphics to the screenshot, like arrows, text etc.

Irfanview can be downloaded here, by the way. It's very easy to use with CIV: Hit PrntScrn, use alt-tab to switch to Irfanview, hit ctrl-v to paste the screenshot and then crop/resize and save it. Voilà!

-Kylearan