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The quality of the screenshots tend to be worse than what I'm seeing in-game. For example, it's a lot fuzzier in some games, especially in darker scenes, than what I'm seeing.

For example, my screenshot from Little Nightmares below is pretty fuzzy

little nightmares screenshot

whereas in this screenshot of a YouTube video, the quality is much better (and their quality in-video is pretty much the same as mine in-game).

youtube screenshot of same scene

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    Is it possible that you're just looking at the screenshots at less than their full resolution, and seeing artifacts of that? Commented 2 days ago
  • @murgatroid99 I'm not sure, but I don't think so (finding them at View > Recordings and Screenshots) Commented 2 days ago
  • OK, do you have an example, then? I don't see any quality issue in my own screenshots. Commented 2 days ago
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    This is a screenshot taken with Steam's tool (default F12, I think), correct? How does it compare to a screenshot taken with printscrn and saved as png in a graphics application? Paint or Paint.NET should work. Looking at the top screenshot, it has a lot of random noise, but that doesn't appear to be JPG artifacts. For youtube, I wouldn't be surprised if youtube smooths out images to reduce the filesize. Commented 2 days ago
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    Probably due to differences in graphics/driver settings or hardware between your system and the one in that YouTube video, plus YouTube's own reencoding. Try using a different screenshot capture program. If you get the same result, that rules out Steam as the culprit. Commented 2 days ago

2 Answers 2

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  • You can turn on 'Save an external copy of my screenshots' in Steam→Settings→In Game. This will save an uncompressed version in a custom folder (/Users//Documents by default).

    screenshot of the Steam Settings menu, in the 'In Game' tab, showing the option to save a copy of the screenshot

  • You can also use Windows' built-in image tool (accessed using Win+Shift+S), or simply use PrtScr (or preferably Win + Prt Scn, as it will save the PNG right in your /Pictures/Screenshots folder and you don't have to paste the image first).

  • But instead of taking screenshots with Steam or Windows, I suggest using Nvidia overlay's Photo Mode (hotkey Alt+F2). You can double the screenshot's resolution (so you'll end up with an uncompressed screenshot 4 times the size of the resolution you're playing at), which usually works very well, and use custom filters to completely change the look and feel. This used to be Ansel (which was way better but replaced because reasons (i.e. enshittification)).

    AMD Adrenalin has a similar option.

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  • What's the benefit of taking a screenshot with higher resolution than the actual display? Commented 12 hours ago
  • @NuclearHoagie It had significantly more detail. Ansel at least used to render the scene at that resolution, not just blow up the screenshot (and apply filters or something to justify the resolution), so it would be like taking a screenshot as if playing at for example 8k instead of 4k (in supported games it could go up to 16k, I believe, in The Witcher 3 and Metro Exodus, among others). (I can share an example later.) Commented 11 hours ago
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Your in game settings are clearly very different than the YouTube ones. I think yours technically has higher end effects turned on (look at your character shading vs the video one). The lighting being so much less crisp is probably because your game has several more effects trying to make it look more "realistic".

Your game seems to have a depth of field blur, which is why the person on the balcony looks less crisp. The game is blurring things further back to look more like how real vision and video can't focus on every depth at once.

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  • I mean, the Lady (person on the balcony) was pretty crisp when I was playing the game, much crisper than the screenshot. Commented yesterday
  • @voided Try comparing it to a screenshot of your own taken outside of Steam vs the one within Steam. Typically a "low quality" image refers to a specific type of image artifact (i.e. jpg artifacts or resizing artifacts), and the comparison youtube image really doesn't look like either of those. Commented yesterday

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