Tekken 8 Photo Mode: How to Capture Absolutely Breathtaking Photos
July 24, 2024
Tekken 8's Photo Mode has finally been released and it offers players an incredible opportunity to capture their favorite characters in ways never possible before. Whether you're aiming to freeze-frame a specific attack or show off a stylish character customization, this guide will help you get the most out of this new mode. From understanding what everything does on a fundamental level to mastering camera angles and effects, you'll learn how to turn even the most basic of Tekken 8 scenes into masterpieces.
How To Take The Best Photo Possible (Explaining The Camera)
Before you even think about adding any filters, you should be primarily concerned with taking the best shot possible. The adjustments that are available to you will make almost any photo look better, but it's only going to make the good photos turn into truly great ones. So how can you capture a good photo? It starts with strategic camera placement. Let me say this now, though. There is no single right way to position the camera; there is beauty to a lot of different angles. Some just happen to be better than others.
Tekken 8 provides you with a Free Camera and an Orbiting Camera, both designed to make repositioning effortless in different ways. The Free Camera allows you to position yourself almost anywhere within the boundaries of the stage. It's a lot more precise as you can inch your way forward to a specific position. The Orbiting Camera orbits around a single point in front of it. Really, I'd only recommend this camera for very slight movements as it incercepts with character models very easily. Both cameras, of course, allow you to rotate almost fully freely.
Experiment with various perspectives to find what works best for your scene. Just make sure that viewers can actually see your subject properly. If you want to show off something like Paul hitting Kuma, it's important that the impact be felt. The photo below would not be nearly as interesting if I had taken it from the other side (behind Kuma). Obfuscating part of a character can be used to great effect, don't get me wrong, but there are priorities when it comes to picture-taking. Composition is also important to take note of. While most of my images here are centrally composed to immediately draw your eyes to the subject, you definitely don't have to do that. I recommend you looking into the rule of thirds to learn about creating aesthetically pleasing alignments. Just know that the togglable grid is your friend.
The last thing that I want to mention here in this section is the zoom level because it is very much important to your presentation of a scene. In Tekken 8, closer is generally better. It's easier to manage the illusion of reality. Once you zoom out a little too much, there's an emotionless feel to that image. For the most part, though, just make sure that everything you want to capture is in focus. Don't compromise on anything if you don't need to.
Explaining Every Single Adjustment And Effect Available In Photo Mode
So now that you roughly know how to get a good base image, it makes sense to learn how you can improve it further. To do that, adjustments and effects are going to be your best friend. If you're not too familiar with photo editing, you might find many of the available options confusing or difficult to understand. So, to help you, here is a brief description of every single adjustment and effect in Tekken 8's Photo Mode:
Camera
- Lens Type: Each lens type has its own default zoom level and its own distinct minimum and maximum zoom level. They're all very similar, though, so it doesn't really matter what you pick.
- Autofocus/Adjust Focus: Both of these change what is being focused on. The focused subject will appear sharp while a majority of the rest of the photo will be blurred by default.
- Blur: This changes the strength of the blur effect. Really, this is only significant for its ability to entirely remove blur from your photo. You'll need this for heavily zoomed in images.
We can skip the Display Settings, honestly, as they're pretty self-explanatory. You can hide character(s) and effects. That's about the only way these settings can impact your photos. Everything else is UI-related.
Adjust Color
- White Balance: For all intents and purposes, think of this as a slightly more complex color temperature slider. With how strong the adjustments are in Tekken 8, that's mostly the purpose it serves.
- Saturation: This controls the intensity of the colors within your image, making them more vivid or more muted.
- Contrast: This allows you to control the difference between the darkest and lightest parts of your image. You can either intensify that difference or make it look less distinct.
- Brightness: C'mon, you know what brightness is. On a technical level, you're modifying the midtones with this slider.
As for the Filters section, it's best that you explore all of the available filters yourself. If you don't want to personally play around with things like contrast and saturation, these filters quicken that editing process by a lot. They all change different aspects of an image so test them out and see which ones match the vibe you're going for. The last option, vignette, is a dark border you can add to your image. It isn't on by default so you would have to personally add it in. It looks...alright.
Screen Effect
- Bloom: Once you set this beyond 0.0, the bright parts of your image will start to glow. This is very noticeable with any source of lighting such as attack effects or lanterns.
- Lens Flare: If you so desire, you can artificially have light reflect off of the game's camera. Generally makes sense to combine this with bloom.
- Dirt Mask: You can artifically have dirt get all over the game's camera. Think less brown specks and more those small transparent patches that screens tend to get.
- Chromatic Aberration: This is a color distortion effect that appears around the edges of objects in your photo. I don't recommend using this as it isn't great for most still images.
- Noise: This is basically film grain. If you want a dirty, slightly more realistic look, this will give you just that.
Last but not least are the Water Drops effects. Here you can artificially put water droplets all over the game's camera in various different preconfigured styles. Using the available sliders, you can change how much of the screen they take up and you can also modify how much they blur the screen.
Putting Everything Into Practice
Knowledge is one part of the puzzle; however, execution is what really matters. How impactful are these adjustments and effects in actual practice? The answer is very. In your photo editing process, you need to be very precise. Playing around with the sliders too much is unlikely to do you any service.
The Adjust Color settings, in particular, shouldn't be overmodified. For most users' purposes, adjusting any of those settings by more than 1 interval up or down will likely produce too strong of a change. This is very easy to notice so you can confirm it for yourself. While there are exceptions, if you just want your image to pop a little bit more, keep what I said in mind. Be conscious of the fact that you don't need to use everything available to you. White balance, especially, might change the mood of your photo too much.
My favorite feature to play around with is bloom and it's one that I would recommend to everybody. The lighting in Tekken 8 is exceptional and having a more pronounced effect reflecting off your characters can make for a more complex, striking image. The Reina photo below is a perfect example. There is no red filter being put on her. That's all lighting, enhanced with bloom. Really, try to incorporate attack effects into your picture taking. Whether or not it's going to be the main focus of your photo, it can add a nice level of depth to your pictures thanks to the power of bloom.
As previously mentioned in this article, capturing images with a sense of realism is a key goal. In order to do that sometimes, you'll need to hide the rigidity of the scene and character models. Zooming in will always be a good way to do that, but proper use of focus and blur can do a lot for your photo on top of that. Blurring out the opposing character or the background or even a part of your main subject is totally fine if they don't add anything to your photo. If you have a subject that's interesting enough, people shouldn't care about what's surrounding them. And for good measure, add a little bit of noise into the image. It works especially well when parts of your image are already unfocused. That hint of realism can go a long way.
Photography is a form of art; there's no right or wrong way to do anything so long as you have artistic justifications for your decisions. None of that changes here within the photo mode of Tekken 8. Don't let my advice stop you from expressing your creativity. These are just tips. There are no rules here.
Hopefully, you've taken away something of value out of this write-up. Really, I just want people to take the best pictures that they can. It makes for a better viewing experience for everyone. I'm excited to see what people come up with. Happy snapping, and maybe we'll even see one of your photos featured in an official event.
