(UPDATED: 10/31/21)
Keep in mind that this is intended to provide the best quality screenshots--not performance--for your PC or laptop. When you're done, don't forget to restore your client's previous gameplay settings!
For those of you that aren't aware of this (I know I wasn't until 2014), there are actually two clients for The Lord of the Rings Online; the standard resolution client and the high resolution client. For the purpose of taking the best screenshots possible, I recommend the latter.
- Standard client - Default download from the LOTRO official site
- High resolution client - See image below on how to enable HD textures from the game's launcher
If you're unsure what you're running, you won't have to worry about reinstalling the game. From the launcher, click on the options menu, and then on the general tab. Check the box next to "Use high resolution game data", OK to apply the change, and then restart your launcher. A 6 GB download should follow.
First of all, LOTRO, by default, runs on DirectX 9. Certainly you can use DX10 or the recommended DX11. By now, unlike in 2015 when I wrote this guide, all video cards should be capable of DX11. To change this, open the Options menu, and look for the dropdown window called "Graphics Hardware Level" under the Quality heading. If you're curious why I mention this, the later DirectX settings will enhance the quality of shadowing, lighting, and textures.
Second, if you return once more to the Options Menu you'll see a dropdown window called "Overall Graphics Quality," which is also under the Quality header. This contains predetermined settings ranging from very low to ultra high, which pulls from the various settings from the Advanced Graphics tab. You want to shoot for ultra high or as close to it as your system lets you. Here are some examples of those settings. I've chosen to take this screenshot at night for the purpose of demonstrating a range of lighting, shadows, water quality, and textures on a building:
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| Same location using the high res client, running with DX11, and antialiasing set to 8x. Notice how full the trees look on high and ultra high? |
There are many more filters and settings you can tinker with in the Advanced Graphics menu, should you want to refine those predetermined settings. These deal with shadows, dynamic lighting, atmospheric quality, draw distance, texture qualities, and so forth. When you have time, it's a great idea to familiarize yourself with them. Personally, I don't crank everything to the max. I like to cut back frills and disable the buggy DX11 ambient occlusion, which creates tears in shadows and sometimes affects character hair.
Easily, the optimal time is during the day, rain or shine. The sunlight is at its brightest from late morning to mid afternoon, creating ideal conditions at most locations. Bright daylight also makes both the color and patterns in your clothing stand out easier. Taking your screenshot at dawn can result in reduced lighting, though it intensifies as time passes. When it's dusk, everything will be initially cast in an orange light, adding a tint to anything taken, and whatever natural light is left will gradually diminish.
When night rolls around, the least ideal time, you'll want to use artificial light sources, such as torches, lanterns, fireplaces, glowing crystals, etc. As pretty as it may be, the moonlight is very weak. Sometimes a moonlit or dark screenshot is warranted, especially if it goes with the concept behind the outfit. Keep in mind that sources of light will also affect the tint of your clothing.
An important thing to note: Whatever time of day it is, always remember to face south, or as close to it as possible. Despite the fact the sun and moon both rise from the east and set in the west, the light produced by these celestial bodies only come from the south in LOTRO. Makes perfect sense, doesn't it?
Curious about how long the day/night cycles in LOTRO last? Here's some information on the length of stages in those cycles. Courtesy of Devonna, from The Lotro Stylist.
Day-Time lasts 1 hour 42 minutes 20 seconds
Dawn = 9 minutes 32 seconds
Morning = 28 minutes 42 seconds
Noon = 17 minutes 47 seconds
Afternoon = 27 minutes 58 seconds
Dusk = 18 minutes 21 seconds
Night-Time lasts 1 hour 23 minutes 40 seconds
Gloaming = 9 minutes 30 seconds
Evening = 27 minutes 59 seconds
Midnight = 8 minutes 59 seconds
Late Watches = 19 minutes 1 second
Foredawn = 18 minutes 11 seconds
There are some great tools available through the Graphics and Advanced Graphics panels in the options menu that will help you manipulate lighting to a certain extent. Some of these tools won't be of much use, but they can make a difference. Here are five settings that you could adjust: ambient lighting, brightness, contrast, gamma, and the overbright bloom filter. Although there are other settings found in these menus, the ones listed here only help make your outfits easier to see. They don't improve the details themselves.
- Ambient light is a fantastic feature. With the slider, you can adjust the intensity of light coming from all sources, making lanterns and fires seem to produce either more or less light. The slider starts at zero, so you can never make anything produce less light than the base setting.
- Brightness simply affects how white or black everything appears on your screen (greyscale essentially). This is a feature that should be altered minimally, as dark colors become greyish while moving the slider right and light colors become dark when moving it left. Keep it as close to 1.00 on the scale as possible.**
- Contrast simply makes your brights brighter and your darks darker as you move the slider right. Moving it left has the opposite effect. As with brightness, use this sparingly. Keep it as close to 1.00 on the scale as possible.**
- The gamma level slider determines the luminosity of anything you see. Unlike ambient light, gamma doesn't affect how much light an object creates. Instead, it either intensifies or diminishes existing lighting levels. You can be a little more liberal with this than contrast and brightness. Keep it as close to 1.00 on the scale as possible.**
- The overbright bloom filter, which affects how intensely white areas glow, is only useful on ultra-high settings. Disabling bloom will make the difference between a white dress being a white dress or a giant ball of white light. This is a simple toggle.
**These three settings are actually tied into your monitor settings. Changing these also affects what you see outside of the game.
Help! It's too dark and I can't see enough of my character!
If you're still having difficulty seeing your character, here's a secret. At night or whenever you're inside a cave or dimly lit space, you can activate your "personal lantern." Basically, this lantern is an angled, invisible light suspended slightly higher than your character's head. By pressing Alt+F10, you can toggle it between three settings--front, back, and off (see image below). Each time you use the keybind, you'll rotate through those settings in that order, never having more than one given intensity toggled.
The lantern a great tool to use in proximity to a wall. Despite it's limited range, the light does reflect back somewhat, making it easier to take pictures when no other sources of light are nearby.
I'm sure that most of us have thought this at one time or another. If you've made an outfit for the sake of making an outfit, almost any location can be suitable. But when you've made an outfit with a specific context or purpose, finding the right location to showcase your creation can truly make it come to life. There are many places in Middle-earth from which to chose, each with subtle differences in lighting, vegetation, sky coloration, terrain, and weather. The questions I like to ask myself are "What was the basic idea behind this outfit?" followed by either "Is this more of an indoor or outdoor ensemble?" or "What region does this outfit connect with most?" Usually, this is a good place to start.
As you quest or travel across the landscape, take notes about locations that interest you. Was there something specific about it that you liked? The variety of flowers? The color of the sky at sunset? The brook running through the middle of a forest? It'll significantly cut down on the time you spend searching for that special spot. Sometimes, while thinking of your reasons, you'll feel the urge to make an outfit or your mind might jump to a particular piece of gear that fits wherever you are. That's great! Half the work is done for you!
Don't forget that you can also use instance and skirmish spaces are handy for screenshots!
Some places don't have a normal atmosphere. Should I find another location?
Randomly generated weather. Hazy environments. Although it's not necessary to relocate, you should pay attention to the atmosphere of your chosen location. Most zones in LOTRO offer clear air and bright, neutral light. Some zones, however, have particular nuances that can affect picture clarity. Lothlórien and Mirkwood, for example, have a permanent haze. The Misty Mountains are frequently subjected to blizzards. The Refuge of Edhelion is covered in a thick brownish fog. Sometimes crossing into certain areas will result in the sky going dark, even in the middle of the day. The area around Barad Gularan in Angmar is an example of that.
Here are a few atmospheric comparisons for your convenience:
You don't always have the luxury of controlling a zone's atmosphere. However, there are ways to suppress or minimize the effects of particular places. The first option I would suggest is look at your bloom intensity slider in the Post Processing section of the Advanced Graphics panel and slide it to the left. There is a good chance you'll be able to reduce the haze in places like Lothlórien enough to take a clear picture. If that doesn't work, try unchecking Post Processing Effects in the same panel, even though you'll lose all other bloom/glow effects and, if you're near any, water textures. As for dread zones, you can disable Dread Effects found in UI Settings. Lastly, Atmospheric Detail will help your minimize the amount of rain and snow on the low setting.
How do I make my character come alive in my pictures?
Use your emotes and your skills! While the animations are progressing, you'll want to spam your screenshot key as quickly as possible to capture a multitude of interesting positions. This is a great way to repurpose those animations you've seen for levels on end! The more pictures you take, the better chance you have of finding something dynamic. Let me show you some examples already found on my blog.
To the left is one of my hobbit alts, Pennycandy. Here, you see her looking up and pointing at a specific keg filled with ale. This is actually the /whippitydo emote. To the right is my champion, Satella. I used the ending sequence of the rend skill to create a wide, but crouched defensive stance.
Before you start spamming away your skills, memorize their locations and bindings on your quickbars. Once you hide your UI (the F12 key), you won't be able to see where you've placed what skills. Emotes are a tad more difficult to use. I can suggest two approaches. Use your emote by either selecting it from the list next to your chat bar or typing it into your char bar, quickly hiding your UI, and then spamming your screenshot key. You can also bind emotes to your numerical keys. I'll teach you the chat bar command, followed by a working example:
/shortcut <numerical key> /<emote> would become /shortcut 2 /dance_elf
And this would allow your character, with the UI hidden, to perform that emote by using the assigned key.
Thank you for browsing this guide and I hope it helps!
With what do I take my screenshots?
There are a variety of methods you can use to capture client images.
Every picture taken here, after early October 2013, was taken with FRAPS and saved as bitmap files, even though I upload them here in .png format (Blogspot only provides so much picture storage space). You might be wondering why I use this third party software. FRAPS has distinct advantages over the other two methods. First, bitmap files fully preserve the color quality and image clarity you see in-game pixel for pixel. JPEGs are slightly pixelated and can mute the most vibrant of colors. Second, you can take multiple shots, especially if you're trying to capture dynamic poses. Unlike LOTRO, which lags at every press of the hotkey after accruing enough screenshots, there isn't a delay between button presses. In fact, you can take pictures as fast as you can spam the key. Third, this is far superior to using Print Screen because you'll never have to paste one image at a time into your editing program or try to perfectly time the screenshot.
Aside of lighting and location, there are still a couple tiny details to mention. By pressing the "N" key, you can hide floating names in LOTRO. You also can toggle your UI on and off by pressing F12. Just doing these two things will remove clutter from your screenshots.
There are a variety of methods you can use to capture client images.
- The first method is using the one of the screenshot keybinds in LOTRO, which are F11, Ctrl+P, or whatever keybind you choose. LOTRO automatically saves your captures as JPEG (.jpg) files in your The Lord of the Rings Online folder, which is found in My Documents.
- The second method is to use Print Screen key at the top of the keyboard. This snaps an image of whatever is active on your desktop in bitmap (.bmp) format and places it on the clipboard. Open whatever editing software you use and simply paste it. Save it if you like it. However, LOTRO must be in windowed mode for this method to work, otherwise it'll take a screenshot of whatever is running under your client. Keep in mind that your clipboard can only hold one image at a time.
- The third method, the one I use, is to take your screenshots with a free program called FRAPS. It has the ability to take pictures in either JPEG or bitmap format. When you install this program, you can choose where you'd like your pictures to be automatically saved and which keybind takes them.
Every picture taken here, after early October 2013, was taken with FRAPS and saved as bitmap files, even though I upload them here in .png format (Blogspot only provides so much picture storage space). You might be wondering why I use this third party software. FRAPS has distinct advantages over the other two methods. First, bitmap files fully preserve the color quality and image clarity you see in-game pixel for pixel. JPEGs are slightly pixelated and can mute the most vibrant of colors. Second, you can take multiple shots, especially if you're trying to capture dynamic poses. Unlike LOTRO, which lags at every press of the hotkey after accruing enough screenshots, there isn't a delay between button presses. In fact, you can take pictures as fast as you can spam the key. Third, this is far superior to using Print Screen because you'll never have to paste one image at a time into your editing program or try to perfectly time the screenshot.
Any other screenshot tips?
In combat, there are still a few things you can do. You should disable any settings that may interfere, like the reticule that comes with the "Show the vitals of your selection's target" in your Combat Options menu. I'd also recommend turning off floating numbers, like exp and damage, or overhead quest rings in your UI Settings.
At this point, anything else you do is entirely optional. You can disable dread effects, blood effects, combat hit effects, avatar hit effects, and monster attack effects. However, these settings are purely aesthetic. I usually take my pictures with all of these disabled that way I don't see the glowing, flaming, sparkling particle effects. Though, for special effect, I might enable avatar hit effects for my own skill animations.
Use your emotes and your skills! While the animations are progressing, you'll want to spam your screenshot key as quickly as possible to capture a multitude of interesting positions. This is a great way to repurpose those animations you've seen for levels on end! The more pictures you take, the better chance you have of finding something dynamic. Let me show you some examples already found on my blog.
To the left is one of my hobbit alts, Pennycandy. Here, you see her looking up and pointing at a specific keg filled with ale. This is actually the /whippitydo emote. To the right is my champion, Satella. I used the ending sequence of the rend skill to create a wide, but crouched defensive stance.
Before you start spamming away your skills, memorize their locations and bindings on your quickbars. Once you hide your UI (the F12 key), you won't be able to see where you've placed what skills. Emotes are a tad more difficult to use. I can suggest two approaches. Use your emote by either selecting it from the list next to your chat bar or typing it into your char bar, quickly hiding your UI, and then spamming your screenshot key. You can also bind emotes to your numerical keys. I'll teach you the chat bar command, followed by a working example:
/shortcut <numerical key> /<emote> would become /shortcut 2 /dance_elf
And this would allow your character, with the UI hidden, to perform that emote by using the assigned key.
Thank you for browsing this guide and I hope it helps!
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