This guide will show you how to take screen grabs from the game and prepare them (as well as any other images you may have) for uploading to our forums. Our goal will be to make pictures that are smaller than 100kb (the size limit for our forums) and we will also look at cropping and resizing images to ensure that they fit well o­n the page and don't cause horizontal scrollbars to appear. Last of all, we will show how these perfect images are uploaded to our forums.

Submitted by Lord_Ako, Aubergine, WitchHazel, Bill_the_Brave, Dragonheart_Killer

Why Upload Pictures to our Forums?

With so many free image hosting sites now available, you might be wondering "Why should I upload images to the forums?" - well, the answer is simple...

Every so often, these free image hosting sites either limit bandwidth or terminate your accounts or worse still just cease to exist!  This leads to broken image links in our forums and that annoys everyone!

So, by uploading images to your forum posts (which is free, by the way) you ensure that they will always be visible in your forum post.

To help you do this we've created this tutorial that shows you how to take screen graps, prepare them and then upload them to our forums.

Taking Screen Grabs

Before we get started we need to know how to take screen grabs of the game and indeed any other Windows program...

There are two ways to take screen grabs in Stronghold and Crusader, the second of which can be used to take a screen grab of anything running in Windows!

When taking screen grabs of the game, you might want to press the "Tab" key to hide the castle options bar - this results in the entire screen being used to display your map.

• Load a map then press "Alt" + "Q" - this will save the current display as a file called "screen_capture.bmp" in your Stronghold or Stronghold Crusader folder. This creates the highest quality images.
• Press the "Prt Scn" (also known as "Print Screen", "Prt Sc", "Prt Scrn", etc) button to copy everything o­n screen to the Windows Clipboard.

If you take a screen grab from the game, you will need to return to Windows in order to access your image editing software. You could exit the game, but most of the time it is easier to press "Alt" + "Tab" - this will leave the game running in the background and return you to the Windows Desktop. You will then be able to access your other Windows applicaitons such as paint packages, web browser and email and go back to the game at any time by clicking it's icon in the task bar.

Note: If you want to take screen grabs of your entire map, please look at this topic in our forums for more information.

Preparing Pictures using Microsoft Paint by WitchHazel

Microsoft Paint is a basic image editing program that is supplied with most versions of Windows - so it's free!  You can access it from the Start menu under "Accessories".

Launch Paint and then use o­ne of the following methods depending o­n where your image is...

Loading an Image From Disk

If you are loading an image from disk (e.g. if you pressed "Alt" + "Q" in the game of you have saved an image form an email to your desktop, etc), do the following:

From the File menu, choose "Open..." as shown below:

Browse to the folder where your game is insalled and you should see a file called "screen_capture" or "screen_capture.bmp":

Select the file as shown and then click the "Open" button.

Pasting an Image From the Clipboard

If you used the "Prt Scn" button to send the screen grab to your Windows Clipboard, you need to use a different process to get the image in to Paint...

From the Edit menu, select "Paste" as shown below:

Editing Your Image

Because people don't want to see huge expanses of grass or sand with just a single building or unit in the middle, you should always trim your image so that o­nly the interesting bits remain.

Start by choosing the "Selection" tool (dashed rectangle button) o­n the toolbar.

Next, drag a rectangle around the piece of the screenshot you want to keep - everything outside this rectangle will be discarded and everything inside it will be kept. If you don't get the rectangle right first time, simply draw a new rectangle until you are happy with your selection.

From the Edit menu, select "Cut" to copy the selected part of the image to the Windows Clipboard:

From the File menu, choose "New" - if you are asked to save the current image, choose "No".

You should now have a new blank image as shown below:

Resize this box (by dragging it's bottom right corner up towards the top-left corner) so that it is smaller than your image to ensure you do not get any white borders around your image.

From the Edit menu, choose "Paste":

This will paste the contents of the Windows clipboard in which contains the section of the image you wanted to keep.

Resizing Your Image

Now that you have the desired screenshot you need to make it small enough for uploading and make sure it is not too wide to fit o­n our forums.

From the Image menu, choose "Stretch/Skew..." as shown below:

Enter in the horizontal and vertical stretch scaling factor and then click the "OK" button to make the changes:

Saving the Image

Before we can upload the image to the forums, it needs to be saved back to disk.

Select "Save As..." from the File menu and name the file and set the type to "JPEG", then click "Save":

Now you need to check the file size.  Using Windows Explorer, go to the folder where you saved the picture and select it:

The size will be shown in the details panel at the left side and also in a tool-tip if you hover your mouse over the image file.  If the image is still too big, you will have to resize it so it is smaller.

Preparing Pictures using Adobe Photoshop by Lord_Ako

Photoshop is a great program that lets you do all kinds of things with pictures. I will just cover the basics here because that is enough when making screenshots. I have used o­ne of the latest versions of Photoshop, Photoshop CS, but this should work in older versions as well.

Launch Photoshop and then use o­ne of the following methods depending o­n where your image is...

Loading an Image From Disk

If you are loading an image from disk (eg. if you pressed "Alt" + "Q" in the game or you have saved an image from an email to your desktop, etc), do the following:

• From the File menu, choose "Open"
• Select the file you want to load (e.g. "screen_capture.bmp" in your main Stronghold or Stronghold Crusader folder).
• You will now see your screenshot displayed in a window inside Photoshop.

Pasting an Image from the Clipboard

If you used the "Prt Scn" button to send the screen grab to your Windows Clipboard, you need to use a different process to get the image in to Photoshop:

From the File menu, select "New":

You will now see various options...

• Name gives the option to name the file, I suggest you type something here
• Preset should just be left alone
• Width and Height are not important yet so leave them as it is
• Resolution: Use 72 Pixels/Inch to ensure small file size
• Color Mode: Use RGB color at 8 bit. RGB is monitor color and 8 bit keeps the file small.
• Background Contents is the final option and should be set to Transparent
• Press ok after you have set all the options right
• Photoshop will now open a window filled with small gray and white cubes.
• Press "Ctrl" + "V" (or from the Edit menu, choose "Paste") to paste your screen shot in to the window.

Editing Your Image

Because people don't want to see huge expanses of grass or sand with just a single building or unit in the middle, you should always trim your image so that o­nly the interesting bits remain.

Start by selecting the Rectangular Marquee Tool from the tool menu.

Next, drag a rectangle around the piece of the screenshot you want to keep - everything outside this rectangle will be discarded and everything inside it will be kept. If you don't get the rectangle right first time, simply draw a new rectangle until you are happy with your selection.

Select "Crop" from the Image menu to remove everything outside the rectangle.

Resizing and Flattening Your Image

Now that you have the desired screenshot you need to make it small enough for uploading and make sure it is not too wide to fit o­n our forums.

To resize your image select "Image Size" from the Image menu - this will open another window called "Image Size":

Here you are able to change the pictures width and height and its resolution.

As I said before the resolution should be 72 DPI.

When setting the width and height keep in mind that the width can be no more than 640 pixels. I advice you to check the "constrain proportions" option because that keeps the picture in its orginal shape.

Press "OK" and photoshop will now resize your picture.

To make sure we can save the screenshot as a ".jpg" file we need to flatten the image now to make sure everything is o­n o­ne layer.

Select "Flatten Image" from the Layer menu.

Saving the Image

Before we can upload the image to the forums, it needs to be saved back to disk.

Select "Save as" from the File menu and name the file (If you haven't done so already) and set the file type to ".jpg".

Now, after you clicked "OK", Photoshop will ask you to set the File Quality.

This is another way to keep your file small, especially if you choose to run a higher resolution. I recommend setting it around 8 in general. Notice that file size is also displayed so you can see the impact the compression will have o­n that.

After saving your image, make sure it is no larger than 100kb. You can do this by right-clicking the file and then selecting Properties from the menu. You will now see general information about the picture, including it's size.

If the file is too large simply re-open it in Photoshop and make it smaller.

That's it! Your file is ready for uploading to our wonderful forums, which we'll show you how to do further down this page...

Preparing Pictures using JASC Paint Shop Pro by Aubergine

Paint Shop Pro can't do quite as much as Photoshop, but it's a lot easier to use in for simple image manipulation. The latest version of Paint Shop Pro is 8, but I'm still using version 5 - the tools we will use here are basically the same though...

Loading an Image From Disk

If you are loading an image from disk (eg. if you pressed "Alt" + "Q" in the game or you have saved an image from an email to your desktop, etc), do the following:

• From the File menu, choose "Open"
• Select the file you want to load (e.g. "screen_capture.bmp" in your main Stronghold or Stronghold Crusader folder).
• You will now see your screenshot displayed in a window inside Paint Shop Pro.

Pasting an Image from the Clipboard

If you used the "Prt Scn" button to send the screen grab to your Windows Clipboard, you need to use a different process to get the image in to Paint Shop Pro:

• Press "Ctrl" + "V" (or from the Edit menu, choose "Paste") to paste your screen shot in to a new window.

Editing Your Image

Because people don't want to see huge expanses of grass or sand with just a single building or unit in the middle, you should always trim your image so that o­nly the interesting bits remain.

Start by selecting the Selection tool from the toolbar:

Next, drag a rectangle around the piece of the screenshot you want to keep - everything outside this rectangle will be discarded and everything inside it will be kept. If you don't get the rectangle right first time, simply draw a new rectangle until you are happy with your selection.

Press "Shift" + "R" or choose "Crop to Selection" from the Image menu to remove everything outside the rectangle.

Resizing

Now that you have the desired screenshot you need to make it small enough for uploading and make sure it is not too wide to fit o­n our forums.

To resize your image press "Shift" + "S" (or select "Resize..." from the Image menu) - this will open another window called "Resize":

If the width is bigger than 640 (as shown above where we have 672), set it to 640, otherwise leave it at it's current value. Make sure the "Maintain aspect ratio" box is ticked, then click "OK" to resize the picture.

Saving the Image

Before we can upload the image to the forums, it needs to be saved back to disk.

Select "Save As..." from the File menu (or press "F12") and name the file and set the file type to "JPEG", then click "Save".

Should your file be bigger than 100kb (the forums will tell you if it's too big when uploading), open it in Paint Shop Pro again, then choose "Save As..." as before, but this time click o­n "Options" before you click o­n "Save". When you do this, you get to set the quality of the image using the slider shown below - the higher the compression, the smaller the file size:

An alternate way is to reduce the width of the image (as shown earlier) to a smaller size (for example 400) as that will also make the file size smaller.

When your file is smaller than 100kb, you can upload it to our forums...

Uploading Images to our Forums

Here's a quick guide o­n how to attach pictures and files to your posts in the forums...

When making a post, first enter some text (in the usual manner) to describe the file, then click the "Add an Attachment" button shown in the picture below:

Next, click o­n the "Browse" button - this will show a "Select file" or "File open" dialog box that allows you to locate the file to be uploaded:

Once you have set your file, enter a short description for it and then click the "Add Attachment" button - this will upload the file to the server.

A common mistake is to click the "Submit" button - this will submit your new topic or reply to our forums but will NOT attach the picture.  Always click the "Add Attachment" button first!

You can repeat the process to add as many files as desired but you are o­nly allowed to add 3 files per post.  If you need to add more than 3 files, you will need to create more than o­ne post.

Once you are done, click the "Submit" button in the usual way to add your post to the forums.  The end result will look something like this (taken from a picture recently uploaded to our forums):

That's all for now... Have fun!