#ts4 edit tutorial

**Update: The way I did the first post is more complicated than it needs to be. You do not need an exact post color match. You just need a png with transparency at the bottom, and it will blend with all screens! I will test it and report back, but it should be more effective than this!

⬇️old method⬇️

Step 1: Set up the your blender scene

Step 2: Render an image slightly longer than you are used to, so the viewer is forced to scroll (this helps the illusion). I went 1280 x 2600 px, but this blurred the text, so perhaps shrink the ratio. **Make the height at least twice the width.**

Bring it into photoshop/GIMP/medibang/etc.

Alternate: Take a screenie in the sims, go straight to Step 3

Step 3: Add in black and grey divisions and headers, referencing tumblr for proportions. Screenshots pasted in are your friend, here, but be aware:

Desktop uses grey HTML color #1a1a1a

Mobile uses grey HTML color #222222

To melt into the border on mobile scroll, you MUST use #222222, and it will look WRONG on pc. Trust the process.

Both use true black #000000 for the middle dividing band. (Frankly, the greys are so close, you can use whichever color your screenshots are as the center band with no visual issue. It's the bottom where our eyes will care!)

A flat background in stage 1 will make it easier to mask and cut out your sim-shapes, but 50% opacity and the eraser tool works fine too!

Add shadows if you like, etc. Razzle and dazzle as you will!

And that's it! You've got this!

So I’m gonna start with this unedited screenshot of Felicia. 😁 I don’t use Reshade in my game, too much hassle. :P Instead, I use overlay textures and Photoshop actions to make my shots look pretty~ 😁

Here’s what that shot looks like after I’ve dragged it onto my echo_base.psd (the file I use for all my Winter Echo posts). I resize the shot only after bringing it onto the psd (but for this one, I’m leaving it at the original size). For Winter Echo panels, I use dimensions of 1011x608px at 72dpi.

Here’s what the shot looks like after I’ve turned on my four overlay texture layers above it. I have a large collection of these because I use them in my illustration work. Most of my textures I get from Adobe Stock (or make myself) but you can find a lot of great free ones on google images by using search terms like “gradient texture” or “overlay texture” (to get the best ones, change your image search settings: Tools > Size > Large). Here are the four I’m using for Winter Echo without their overlay effects applied:

And here are the specific overlay settings I’ve applied to each one:

This requires a bit of trial and error! If you use this method you’ll probably end up mucking around with the overlay effects and opacity a lot because the results will vary according to the textures you’re using and the lighting in the shot underneath. These specific textures and their settings took me a while to settle on and I’ve used a variety of others in the past. 😊

This brings me to the Actions Panel! xD If you use a lot of lighting and colour adjustments on your shots, actions are a really good way to record them so you can apply identical effects to each shot. The shot above has had my “WE Indoor New” and “WE Colour Adjust” actions applied. But that doesn’t help you much, so here’s what I’ve actually recorded for those actions:

Photo Filter

First step is always Photo Filter. Sims shots tend to come out a bit too warm imo, so I usually apply a Cooling filter (LBB is slightly purple).

Exposure

Exposure is a bitch to adjust because it will often have wildly different effects in different lighting. So I usually only adjust this a little, and let my textures do most of the lightening/brightening. You can get some very interesting effects with this though (e.g. I used to increase the offset a fair amount to make my shots look more dusty/soft).

Colour Balance

Again, my textures and photo filter are doing most of the work here, but I always add a bit more blue to shadows, and sometimes a bit of yellow to highlights just to take some redness out of skintones.

Levels

I use this instead of brightness/contrast. Just to make whites a little more white, and blacks a little more black, because sometimes my textures can make them a bit dull. Adjust as you like!

Noise

I used to use an overlay texture for this, but I like the consistency of Photoshop’s Noise effect. 😊 Don’t go nuts with this! A tiny bit of noise goes a long way. xD (and also, a higher noise level that looks good on a close up will make your wide angle shots look like a blurry mess, trust me 😅)

That’s all the effects I use in my recorded actions! Next step is...

Dodge & Burn

I only use this on shots that need a little extra depth, and only on faces/hair/clothing. Mostly I use the dodge tool on the T-zone of faces and the burn tool (with a large, soft brush) around the sides of faces. Keep the exposure very low to control how much shadow/highlight you’re adding. (You might also want to work on a duplicate layer for this step, in case you end up hating the result and wanna go back to the original xD)

That’s pretty much it for how I edit my shots! Obviously I haven’t gone into the tiny editing things like smoothing really angular edges, fixing clipping, etc or we’d be here all day. 😅 But here’s a little bit extra about how I make my speech bubbles:

I use Photoshop’s Rounded Rectangle tool on a new layer...

The corner radius can be adjusted in this panel. If you can’t see this panel, you can find it under Window > Properties.

Then I use the Polygonal Lasso tool (right-click on the Lasso tool to find the Polygonal Lasso) to draw a triangle on a new layer, and fill it with white.

I merge the two layers (the rounded rectangle layer & the triangle layer) and bring the opacity down to around 75-80% (depending on the shot in the background - if there’s a lot of detail behind the bubble, it needs to be more solid so the text stays readable). I’ve added text afterwards in this example but I always put the text in first, so I know how big the bubble needs to be and where to place it. I keep all these bubble and text layers in the psd until after they’re posted, so I can easily make edits as needed. 😊 (but I don’t keep them forever, because I’d have thousands of layers by now and the psd would take 10min to open 😅)

for this tutorial you need GIMP 2.8 or higher (you can find it here), the free plugin G’MIC (here) and basic knowledge of GIMP. 

1. place your sim on a new layer (a transparent background isn’t important, but much easier)

2. select your sim layer and go to filters  → G’MIC

3. go to repair  → smooth (antialias). set your settings similar to mine. if you want to smooth it more or less, just play around with the settings. click OK.

4. go to filters  → repair → smooth (diffusion). again; set your settings similar to mine or just play around. then click OK.

5. that’s it! i just added a few curves to my picture.