Games can make you a better photographer, according to Hideo Kojima, but your shots will only be as good as the tools you use. Just like a good real-life photographer needs a decent camera to take good shots (and maybe some good light sources and a few tripods), a good in-game photographer needs a game with a good photo mode.
Most games come with some sort of ability to take in-game screenshots, and many go even further to let you freeze the game and unlock the camera so you can find the perfect shot. But if your game doesn’t have this feature, then PC Gamer suggests the Universal Unreal Unlocker.
This mod was created by Frans Bouma, a software developer who's created several camera mods for games in the past but wanted to do something a little more universal. So he made the Universal Unreal Unlock, a camera mode that works with over 300 games that run on Unreal Engine 4.
UUU lets you do a lot of stuff. You can of course freely move the camera around, but you can also enable the in-game console commands to start really getting into the nitty-gritty of what's presented on screen.
You can remove the in-game HUD for a clearer shot. You can use the frameskip function to find the perfect moment in an action-packed sequence. You can program your camera to follow a path for a series of Matrix-style photos. Or you can fiddle with your game’s graphics settings to enhance an image even past its “ultra” settings.
One of the more impressive features of UUU is "hot sampling," which essentially commands your game to create a momentary super-high-resolution frame so you can get maximum pixels for your photograph.
UUU even lets you go beyond what’s already in the game by adding new light sources to images in real-time, which you can see in Bouma’s latest Kena: Bridge of Spirits shots.
Universal Unreal Unlocker is available here. Check out PC Gamer's coverage for even more beautiful screenshots from the UUU Discord channel.