July 03, 2018

Patch Notes Extras! - Screenshots!

Screenshots 101
It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words.  This is usually true.  But are those a thousand good words, or swear words is the question.  So today, let’s go over how to give the best possible screenshots for your bug reports!

The first thing we need you to know is we aren’t going to hack your computer to look at your screenshots. If the “link” you send us begins with C:\\ or file:\\, this is not a URL we can look at, it is the file location on your computer.  Once you have taken your screenshot, we need you to upload the picture to a public hosting site so we can see it.

What do we mean by public hosting site?  A website where the picture can be viewed without requiring us to download anything, or to have an account.  We highly recommend Imgur and LightShot.  

What other sites can you use?  A lot of people like to use Twitter and Facebook.  Both of these platforms have what can be serious drawbacks.  Twitter pics tend to be too small to be able to see fine details on.  And too many times, Facebook pics are behind a lock and we cannot see them.  If you do plan to use either of these, please try to get a good quality shot and set it for public viewing.

What makes a good quality shot?  First of all, don’t crop it so tight we cannot tell what it was supposed to be of.  It’s best if you just go ahead and screenshot the entire screen, and use circles or arrows or even stickers to point to the spot you want us to look at.  This is especially true when you are reporting about things on a map.  Too tightly cropped and we can’t tell what room you are in.  

Can you recommend a really good screenshot tool?  Absolutely.  My personal favourite is ShareX. You can get it here:  https://getsharex.com/
ShareX allows you to take the screenshot, edit it and upload all in one easy to use window. It’s free, customizable and can be set to upload to a variety of sites.  

Another really good tool is LightShot.
You can get it here:  https://app.prntscr.com/en/index.html
LightShot is easy to use and allows you to edit and upload directly to prntscr.com.