So, with our second screenshot-oriented weekend coming up next weekend, I was wondering if there are some particular things or productions that people want those participating to focus on or do? It's not within everyone's skillset to set up a complex emulator for a system they don't intimately know, and yet others simply do not own the hardware to run certain things.

So - I guess, I'm taking requests. :)

Also happy to share knowledge, so if it's something you want to learn to screenshot, pipe up. Chances are pretty good someone on our team or in the community knows how to accomplish what you need.

Let's go!

I'll start. I'm not very familiar with the platform, so what would be the best emulator to grab screenshots of C64 prods on Windows? Also, I think some emulators offer a choice of several palette to emulate the C64 colours, should we try to use a common one for the screenshots on Demozoo?

Personally, I use WinVICE with the external Pepto palette, which I understand is the "standard" for most people.

You can find the palette setting at Settings -> Video Settings -> VICII Colors - and you check the tick for External Palette and choose Pepto (PAL). I like to turn CRT emulation off by setting Render filter to None in VICII Renderer, since I think that provides pretty crisp results - I'd rather we provide postprocessing ourselves later if need be.

Then there's the case of the various "interlaced" graphics modes, where two images are switched together to give the impression of more colors per area or higher resolution, which I have no idea how to make. I've been sticking with a "better with some screenshot than no screenshot" policy, but I should really figure out how to create those with some suitable tools. I know there are threads upon threads of hudnreds of pages about this on csdb, so yeah - I should probably do my homework on that.

And at the very end of this small rant, an anecdote; Hoxs64 is an alternative c64 emulator that for whatever reason simply does not have the ability to capture screenshots. I wrote the author an email about this a small while back, and he said he would consider it. So far, no dice. It's a shame, because it sometimes works for productions that WinVICE still occasionally renders less-than-perfect results for.

Thanks for all those details. That will be really helpful to become a proficient C64-screenshooter :)

@menace
For interlaced pictures you need to capture 2 screenshots and then you can use this online tool to merge them into 1 image:
https://tomseditor.com/gallery/online?f=blend&lang=en

I don't use any of the palette defaults in VICE, as I find them to be a bit unnatural or weird looking. Then again, my notebook monitor is not properly calibrated (I guess) and taste can't be argued with. :) For what it's worth, here are my settings: 1.5, 0.7, 1.05, 1.25, 0.8 (no external palette) and 0.89, 0.2, 1.25, 0.95 for my CRT emu settings.

As for interlaced stuff; doctored screenshots might be a bit misleading, as you can't properly capture the impression of seeing an interlaced picture this way. While a merged picture gives you a "perfect" result, it's lacking the imperfections that come with the format. It's a bit like those emulated Amiga demos on YT with perfect framerate. It's a bit dishonest/historically incorrect (for lack of a better word) and "better looking" than the real thing.

(I'm working a bit on the screenshots-needed list; removing the tags one by one :)

"It's a bit like those emulated Amiga demos on YT with perfect framerate. It's a bit dishonest/historically incorrect (for lack of a better word) and "better looking" than the real thing."

This is so true.