SWTOR Ultimate Screenshot Guide

Taking screenshots of my characters is one of my favorite things to do in SWTOR – I love the envinroments, my characters, and the armors I’ve picked out for them, especially since I get to show them off on this website all the time!

This is a comprehensive guide on how to take really good screenshots in Star Wars: The Old Republic, so you can show off your character and the outfits you have built for them.

How to Take a Screenshot

The default button to take a screenshot is PRINT SCREEN, sometimes abbreviated to PRT SCR or PRT SCN and located above your arrow keys on your keyboard.

However, I really recommend to instead use a two-button combo – WINDOWS KEY + PRINT SCREEN. The windows key is located in the bottom left of your keyboard, and either has the word “WIN” on it or a picture of the Windows logo. This button tends to work more reliably and always works in cutscenes. It automatically saves a screenshot, which defaults to this folder: “C:\Users\<username>\Screenshots”.

Especially if you are trying to take a small-size screenshot, lots of players like to use the Snipping tool. It is a free tool that comes free with Windows – just search for “Snipping” in the Windows search bar. It allows you to easily “snip” a screenshot of only a certain area of your screen. Then you can press CTRL+C and paste it to a friend in somewhere like Discord. This tool is most useful to me when I don’t want a full-scale screenshot.

There are a bunch of other options available too, like Steam’s built-in screenshot tool. Use whichever one works for you!

1. Turn off the UI

Turning off the User Interface is the first step to an awesome screenshot in SWTOR.

To turn off the UI, press ALT+Z on your keyboard. (And ALT+Z to turn it back on again when you’re done.)

Don’t use CTRL+U+U! This reloads the entire user interface, and you have to wait for it to load back in. This type of reset is mainly a shortcut for if something breaks with your user interface and you need to reset it.

2. Turn off Nameplates

Turning off nameplates of enemies in the background is important if you are in a crowded area.

You can acesss the nameplate settings by pressing ESC on your keyboard -> Preferences -> Nameplates.

From there you can uncheck everything to hide all nameplates and click Apply. Don’t forget to turn them back on afterward if you need them for combat!

Unfortunately, there is no shortcut or hotkey to enable and disable nameplates in SWTOR.

3. Find Lighting

Some areas of the game have much better lighting than others. Each planet also has a unique color of lighting which can affect how your screenshot looks. Some planets have bright, clear light, like Alderaan, and others have murky discolored light, like Hutta. Unless you are trying to take an atmosphere screenshot, you’ll want to choose an area or planet with brighter lighting, especially if you are trying to show off your character or outfit.

In addition, every area will have spots that are in shadow, for example, under a tree or beside a wall. You’ll want to find a patch of light to stand in if you are trying to get a clearly lit screenshot, rather than stand directly in the shadows.

Sometimes you’ll find an amazing background you want to take a screenshot in front of, but it is in a patch of shadow. You can try turning shadows off in your settings temporarily to avoid this! You can access the shadow settings by pressing ESC on your keyboard -> Preferences -> Graphics, then set Shadow Quality to Off. Don’t forget to turn it back on later!

4. Face the Light

This is probably the most important tip when it comes to taking screenshots in SWTOR.

Every planet has a direction from which the light is shining from – imagine that somewhere in the sky, there’s a sun, even if you can’t see it.

If you are facing away from the sun, your character won’t be lit up.

My favorite way to “face the light” is to hold down my right mouse button and move my mouse left and right, as that rotates your character. You won’t be able to see the front of your character though – so once your character’s back is all the way lit up, you can flip them in the exact opposite direction to make the sun light up their front. You can then rotate your camera by hold your left mouse button down. [[[camera unlock sttings]]

If you have a weapon out, you may want to turn your whole chest towards the light, rather than your character’s feet.

Unfortunately, sometimes you’ll find an amazing vista background you want to take a screenshot in front of, and when you try to rotate your character, you’ll find the light is facing the wrong way. Unfortunately there is no real fix for this and you’ll have to decide whether you want a dark character, or if you want to find a different location.

5. Angle Your Camera

For the most part, you’ll want to angle your camera facing your character, as if you were a photographer taking a picture of them at eye level, rather than as a player looking over their shoulder. You can then rotate and angle your camera by holding your left mouse button down and dragging left / right / up / down.

You can also try different angles like slightly below you character!

6. Zoom In

You don’t need to be zoomed out! You can use your mouse wheel to zoom in for a more dramatic screenshot. It’s fine to crop off your character’s feet. Professional photographers usually crop portraits at just below the shoulders – which is right around where your zoom will put you if you zoom in all the way on your character! This will also show more details of your character’s hair, mask, or armor.

If you are doing a zoomed in portrait, it can be fun to try angling your character slightly to the left or right.

More Tips

Following those tips will get you a pretty great screenshot every time – but there’s a lot more you can do to get some fun screenshots!

Take out your Weapon

If you’d like a more cinematic screenshot, try taking out your weapons. you can do this while not fighting by using the Z key on your keyboard. Pressing Z again will sheath your weapon as long as you are not currently in combat.

Glow in the Dark

If you have any glowing elements in your armor, finding a dark area can sometimes be better than standing in the light.

If you want to show off your lightsaber, a dark location can also be really useful.

Emote

There are a lot of different emotes in the game.  What many players don’t know is that you can emote and also turn the UI off with a funny trick!

• First, you’ll need to know the emote’s chat command, for example /dance is for the default Dance emote.
• Second, type the emote in chat, and press enter, allowing the emote to play.
• When you are ready to take your screenshot, turn off your UI with ALT+Z.
• If you press your ENTER key, then your UP ARROW on your keyboard, it will pull up the last message you sent in chat again. Pressing ENTER again will post that message in, in this case,
• When your UI is off, everything still works, you just can’t see it.

Ability

Most abilities can only be used in combat, but there’s a few, especially buffs and area attacks that you can use outside of combat to get a cool screenshot.

Many of the buffs also give your character a glowing effect for a few seconds if you’re fast with your screenshot button.

You can turn your User Interface off with ALT+Z, and your keybinds will still work, so simply put the ability you want to use in one of the keybinds you know – for example, in the 1 2 or 3 slots, so you can then turn off the user interface and just press those keys to activate the ability.

Combat

It’s fairly difficult to get an in-combat screenshot that looks good, but you can get some really fun results. The hardest part is not getting mobbed by enemies to the point where you can’t see your character, and making sure no nameplates sneak into the screenshot while you are fighting.

Even if you turn all nameplates off, if your character auto-selects the next enemy while fighting, you’ll still see the nameplate of the selected enemy even if you didn’t click them specifically.

To prevent this, you can try selecting a really far away enemy or friendly target that’s out of the frame of your screenshot, then running into battle. If you have that far away enemy selected, no other enemies will get nameplates near you (but, you won’t be able to use targeted attacks on them).

I recommend starting the fight from far away if you can. If you are a ranged player, that gives you a few seconds of time before the enemies run to you to prepare. If you are melee, you can do the same, you just need to be a bit faster.

Wall Camera Push for Closeups

If you want to take a closer screenshot of your character’s face, you may notice you can only zoom in so far before the camera goes “through” your character. There is a trick for up-close portraits though! You can have your character walk up close to a wall or corner, facing the wall. Then, left click and drag the camera and swing it round so your character is still facing the wall, but your camera is getting stuck on the wall – this will push it forward, closer to your character’s face. You’ll likely need to play with the distance between your character and the wall so you are not too close or too far since you can’t control the zoom of the camera at that point.

Character Select Screen

The Character Select screen is a really nice place to take screenshots because it generally has great lighting and a nice big close-up of your character.

Hide UI on Character Select Screen

While ALT+Z doesn’t work on the character select screen to hide the interface, you can use CTRL+U+U to reload the interface and if you are quick you can take a screenshot before it reloads, with no interface showing!

Decorations as Lighting

While there is little to no control of lighting in the game or its direction, clever players sometimes use decorations in their strongholds to aim light a specific way. The most well-known item is the Emergency Floodlight. It emits a very bright white light and you can rotate it to point its lighting in the direction you want.

White Backdrop with Decorations

Taking this a step further, players sometimes combine the Emergency Floodlight with a specific background item to light everything up brightly, for example the Officer Divider, a small white background. This also really brightly lights the character, which you may or may not want.

If you are looking for a more normal lighting on your character, but a bright white background, you’ll want to light the background, but not light your character. To do this, you want the lights acing your background, but your character to be in front of the lights. The easiest way to do this is to have two lights on either side shining on your wall, and have your character be more forwards towards the camera than  the lights. This is actually how photographers cleanly light a green-screen so it is nice and bright and evenly lit! You can then also use any other more normal light to actually light your character if you want to.

In this example, I used the Emergency Floodlight x2, the Desert Settlement Wall for my background, and the Revanite Chandelier for more character lighting.

Stand on a Box for Lower Angle

If you’re trying to get a heroic screenshot from below, you may notice that the camera gets stuck on the floor and that you can’t get it to go low enough. Stand on top of a box or chair to get a lower angle.

Cutscenes

Cutscenes are an awesome place to take screenshots, as the lighting in them is often very good, and your character may be positioned in interested ways you can’t normally pose them in while playing in-game.

Just remember that normal PRINT SCREEN often doesn’t work in cutscenes, so make sure to use an alternative like WINDOWS + PRINT SCREEN!

The best time to take a screenshot is usually after your character says something – after you choose something from the dialogue wheel, the camera will often swap to your character instead of the questgiver.

Don’t forget you can press ESC on your keyboard to exit out of a conversation at any time before it ends if you want to restart it!

Cutscenes UI Off

While you can’t press ALT+Z during a cutscene to take a screenshot, you can press ALT+Z before-hand! You won’t be able to see the dialogue wheel, but you can press 1 2 or 3 on your keyboard to progress the conversation, even if you can’t see it.

Outfit in First Cutscene

When you make a new character, they always start off with some very basic clothes.

If you want, you can press ESC on your keyboard during the first cutscene, go get them some clothes, then return to the quest giver to start your first cutscene!

You’ll be level 1 with no ship, so it will have to be an outfit you can wear at level 1 and come from either Collections, or your banks in your stronghold, or the GTN in your stronghold, as you won’t be able to access much else yet. However there are a ton of legacy-wide level 1 armors and all Collections armors can be worn at level 1 with only a few small exceptions. One bigger exception is most color crystals require level 10 or higher, so don’t pick out your color crystal quite yet!

Sharing Your Screenshots

If you are using Discord to share screenshots with your friends, you can often just copy+paste the screenshots straight in to Discord chat. The snipping tool is best for sharing those types of screenshots with friends, as it allows a smaller file size.

If you just need somewhere to upload your screenshot to get a link to send to someone else, you can use imgur.com to upload your screenshot for free.

If you want to show off an outfit, you can post it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #SWTOR to share it with others fans. If you want to share to a community instead, post it to the SWTOR subreddit at reddit.com/r/swtor – just keep in mind, due to the size of the community, there are some restrictions… for example, no character select screenshots, as they are very common.

I’ve also made a site where you can upload your own fashion outfits to share with others! https://swtorista.com/fashion/

Now go forth and screenshot!