Did you know the PS3 can take screenshots natively?

[SeventhSon]

What!? I could have been taking rad screenshots in Demon's Souls all those years ago?

 

[Deean]

From what i read,not all games support this feature.
but if you installed CFW/HEN on PS3 you can do this in all games.
Some games doesn't work well however, for example the WWE 2K games and Rock Band Blitz.

WWE 2K games just pause the game if you press the PS button. And Rock Band Blitz's screen just turned darker so you can't really see the screenshot.

 

[BrawlMan]

About 1-2 years ago when playing Kingdom Hearts Final Mix on my PS3 I noticed that when hovering over the Photo tab on the XMB it gave me the option to take a screenshot. I weirdly didn't give it much thought at the time, assuming it was just some super rare feature that was probably clunky. I didn't even try using it, it was a rare moment of me being a very incurious person. I simply tucked that memory away and forgot about it almost instantly.

Fast forward to now and I've been plowing through my backlog a bunch, primarily my PS3 backlog. Finally getting around to playing the Uncharted trilogy on PS3! Played the multiplayer a lot back in the day but just never got around to playing the campaigns. I did finally beat Uncharted 1 last year via the remaster and replayed the original PS3 release just a couple days ago and I just finished UC2 yesterday (it was amazing). When perusing the XMB, I saw this feature pop up yet again and that memory of Kingdom Hearts having the same feature immediately hit me. "Wait, this game from 2009 also has that feature?" This time I gotta figure out what all this is about!

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So, I took a screenshot and was really impressed with the quality! It does not compress the image nearly as much as the PS4 would, funnily enough. I booted up about 20 different games ranging from disc based to digital, first party to multiplatform, stuff from the launch years and stuff from the end of its life from a variety of publishers. Every game I tried had this feature enabled but judging from some posts on the subject not all games are compatible so maybe I just got lucky with my selection. Apparently, it was added to the firmware in late 2008 and I personally have not heard a single soul talk about it. You can take screenshots, organize them however you'd like on your system and use a usb drive to easily take them from your console and put them on your computer. If you still use your PS3, I recommend giving it a shot! I am unsure if it truly does work on all games, but I am inclined to say it does based on my testing. The fact that even games like Sonic 06 and Heavenly Sword have it means that it must not have required the developers to manually activate the feature, since neither of those games got updates.

One thing I have not been able to test is if it is possible to take pics of PS1 and PS2 games. For those who don't remember/know, when you press the guide button while playing backwards compatible/digital classic games it does not bring up the XMB, but instead a quick menu that simply lets you change a few emulator-specific options. I did read that you can plug in a keyboard and press the Print Screen (PRTSC) key on it to instantly take a screenshot without the need for bringing up the XMB at all, so maybe that would work? If I had a keyboard to test it with I would, I'll have to snag one soon.

It is wild to uncover a dope feature I didn't know existed in what is possibly my favorite home console of all time. Below are some sample screenshots. Click the small ones to enlarge them if you wanna get a close look. Did you know about this feature? If you did, did you ever use it?

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I had no idea. Really wish Sony made that clear in the marketing.