In-Game Photo-Modes That Don't Do That

[Dazaster]

So the shiny new game you've been playing gets a photo-mode and you're like "Woohoo". Games like Star Wars Jedi:Fallen Order, or Far Cry 5, or RDR2.
You start 'em up, take a shot, exit the game and go look at your screenshot. And it's.. a let down because you decided to 'improve' your game with an additional
graphics filter layer, like Reshade, or an ENB. Only the Photo Mode won't capture it.
Maybe you've spent ages tweaking your own preset till you think it's the bees knees. Maybe you just bunged in one you found on Nexusmods coz' it looked great.
But, either way, the new Photo Mode doesn't capture what's on screen. It will only capture the screenshot in the games default look, or with the couple of filters the Photo Mode adds.
Bah! Humbug!
If I've used something to make the game I'm playing look better for me, I expect a screen capture facility to capture it. Otherwise, what's the point?
I hate having to fight games to take the screenshot I want.
For an example Far Cry 5. Before the introduction of Photo Mode, I could use the in-built screenshot facility that comes with Reshade, and the resulting image would be what I was seeing on screen. Now though, only the default look is captured, whether in or out of Photo Mode, using Reshade, Steam or Nvidia Ansel, or even Print Screen, nothing works.
I've stopped playing Far Cry 5.
RDR2 and Jedi:Fallen Order - neither Photo Mode or Reshade will capture the effect, but Nvidia Ansel will. Huh?

Anyway, that's my two cents. If you're going to have a screen capture facility in your game, for the love of God make it capture what I see.

 

[I Will Haunt You]

An understandable annoyance, but a bit much to ask the developer to go out of its way to compensate for things you do outside of the game proper.

 

[Dazaster]

The effects show on screen in the Photo Mode of all the games mentioned. Therefore the developers have gone out of their way to make sure they don't capture them.

 

[Zoid]

The effects show on screen in the Photo Mode of all the games mentioned. Therefore the developers have gone out of their way to make sure they don't capture them.

I don't think it's developers actively making sure that modded graphical effects aren't captured. They don't have any motivation to do that. This sounds like a mod issue.

Photo modes in games aren't necessarily copying what you see on screen. Some might pull frame information from the GPU before Reshade applies its effects, and others do things like hide your HUD which can disable the Reshade effects. If you are having trouble with Reshade's own screenshot function then I'd start by troubleshooting that. Have you tried binding the screenshot key to something other than Print Screen?

An alternative is to get the screen capture by intercepting the video signal once it leaves the computer using an external capture card. That will always show you the same thing that you see on screen.

 

[Dan]

I'd like Nvidia Ansel to work for every game ever.

 

[Zloth]

Like @Zoid said, I'm pretty sure the game can't do what your asking for. The game hands all its data to the driver to render. Reshade and things like it intercept that, fiddle with the image, then send it on through to the driver. Ansel works because it's part of the drivers, so it's seeing Reshade's effects.

Remember all those "wall hacks" that people cheat with in online shooters? Same thing. You know the developers would LOVE to make those things go away but they haven't been able to do it.

 

[Martin]

Re-Shade doesn't work with certain Direct X Depth Buffer Modes, if a game uses it, it can't capture what you see. So thats more of a fault of Re-Shade rather than the games developers.

..Use Re-Shade in conjunction with MSi Afterburners screen capture and you're pretty much covered as that will capture the depth buffer mode compatibility Re-Shade lacks.