Taking Screenshots in Skyrim

Every wonder how people take those mesmerising shots within Skyrim? I did, which is why I poked around Skyrim's .ini files, which led me to these steps:

1. Navigate to your documents folder, then my games. You should see a Skyrim folder - click it.
2. Here, you're looking for Skyrim.ini.
3. Within this file, you'll see a slew of categories ranging from display to water and general. We're looking for display. Insert a line break after your SD3DDevice and input bAllowScreenshot=1. In this case, 1 is a boolean where 1 signifies on and 0 signifies off. This line will allow in game screenshots through use of the print screen button. Save this document and load up Skyrim.

 You may also want to remove the HUD. To accomplish this, hit the tilde key '~' and type: tm and press enter. Hit the tilde key again to resume gameplay. When finished, hit the tilde key again but note that the console menu won't display. This is because we've disabled ALL menus. Type tm again to restore the original display.

**All screenshots will save in Skyrim's root directory (usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\skyrim), i.e. the folder with SkyrimLauncher and TESV.

 Have fun!

Pinning Q-Dir States to the Windows Taskbar

Let's face it. Windows Explorer and productivity shouldn't be allowed in the same sentence. No, in the same paragraph. Tabbed browsing? Changing file and folder colours to better suit you? Saved tab states? Forget about it, you're with Microsoft now baby. But what we can offer is a larger memory footprint for less functionality!

Thankfully, an end to the dinosaur level features exists with programs like Q-Dir. With this program you can achieve all of the above and more. Even better, it comes in a portable version so an install is non-essential. But still, one program can't tackle all issues. One issue I've found with Q-Dir is its lack of automatic state saving. Meaning when you close the instance, you'll have to re-load all of the folders you previously had open.

But hey, I'm not going to complain any more because Q-Dir is damn good at what it does. So here's how to remedy this situation:

In Q-Dir, select file, then 'save current state at desktop item'. I'd recommend naming the file Q-Dir because who the hell remembers events done on a computer by date?
Once finished, close ALL instances of Q-Dir. Make sure it's not still lingering in your taskbar.
Next, right click on your Q-Dir taskbar icon, right click on the small shortcut for it and select properties:

 

 Here, you're looking for the target box. Replace the text with C:\Users\(user)\Desktop\Whatever you named file.qdr.

Now, whenever you open Q-Dir you'll be at your chosen state.

You can move this shortcut to clear up desktop space if you so wish. I used the desktop purely as an example.