How To Take Realistic Screenshots in Assetto Corsa Competizione

Assetto Corsa Competizione is certainly one of the prettiest-looking racing sims. The lighting effects during dusk and dawn, the dirt and particle effects, and the weather all look stunning when racing at 150mph.

When you want to slow things down and capture that perfect moment through Eau Rouge, where the sparks are flying and the sun is glaring off your car, you’ll need to master the art of taking screenshots in ACC.

Many games have a photo mode that lets you crank up the effects and take stunning screenshots. Assetto Corsa Competizione doesn’t have this dedicated mode. However, it does have the “Cinema HUD” as part of its replay mode, which lets us access a few tools to make our screenshots that much nicer.

In this ultimate guide to taking more realistic screenshots in ACC, I’ll show you how to add motion blur and depth of field to your screenshots as well as looking at the best graphic settings for screenshots.

The process of taking realistic screenshots in ACC

I will look at each part of taking a realistic photo in detail in this ultimate screenshot guide for ACC. But first, I want to give you a very quick how-to take realistic screenshots and photos in Assetto Corsa Competizione.

1. Turn all graphics settings as high as you can; ideally, set all to epic. Copy our settings below for a reference.
2. Enter the replay mode from the gallery or during a session.
3. Press F7 to enter free cam mode and use the arrow keys to position your camera.
4. Press the middle mouse button to open the Cinema HUD.
5. Enable and configure your depth of field using our guide below.
6. Rewind and playback your replay.
7. Capture screenshots using the F12 shortcut.

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Ideal graphics settings for ACC

The first step of mastering lifelike photos and screenshots within Assetto Corsa Competizione is to ensure your graphics settings are correct. The higher your graphics settings, the sharper and generally better your screenshots will look.

If you have a graphics card that can handle epic graphics settings, go ahead and maximise everything to give you the best graphics. This can cause your frame rate to drop if you try and race with the settings at their maximum.

For this reason, I would recommend saving a “photo mode” graphics preset that allows you to quickly switch between your gameplay graphics settings and more intense settings for photos only. You can change your graphics settings mid-session, so you can load the higher settings for photos only, and then revert back when racing.

Our settings are below as a reference. I am using ACC version 1.10.2 for this guide, and my gaming PC uses an RTX 4080 allowing me to run max settings at all times. Click on any of the images below to increase the size.

Graphics setting	Value
Scaling	200%
All graphics settings	Epic
Antialiasing	Epic
Antialiasing Type	FXAA
DLSS	Disabled
FSR	Disabled
Temporal Upsampling	Enabled
Volumetric Fog	High
HLOD	Enabled
Motion Blur	Enabled (Required for motion blue in photos)
Sharpness	90%
Image Contrast	0.75
Exposure Gain	0.30
Tone Mapping	Aces

Enabling the highest screenshot setting in Steam

We will be using Steam to take photos rather than the built in screenshot tool as this is the only way to get motion blue in our images. Because of this it is important to ensure that our Steam screenshots are at the highest resolution and quality.

1. To do this, head into your Steam settings
2. Navigate to in-game in the side menu
3. Enable all settings under the screenshots menu.

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Create a replay or watch a replay from your current session

With all of our graphics settings configured, we can head into ACC and start taking screenshots.

Games like F1 24 have photo modes that let you take almost live photos. Assetto Corsa Competizione doesn’t implement photos in this way. Instead, we will use the replay mode to take our photos. This is a better approach as we have access to the entire session replay to find that perfect photo.

You can either save a replay at the end of a session and replay it to capture your screenshots, or simply pause your current session and enter the replay.

All of the magic will happen in the replay. We can configure our camera to get the perfect angle and make camera adjustments to enable depth of field or motion blue for the perfect shot.

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Learning the camera controls

Within the replay file, you have a few tools at your disposal. You can adjust the playback position, the speed of the playback, HUD overlays and more. You can adjust the camera angle to cycle between the preset cameras, such as the cockpit, hood cam, and chase cam, as a few examples.

The problem is that none of these preset camera angles allow for the best photo angles. Instead, we have to access the free camera. We can do this by using quick shortcuts.

• Press F7: Pressing the F7 button will detach your camera from any of the presets and let you manually position it wherever you like.
• Middle mouse button: Open the Cinema HUD. This will let you change various parts of the image, including the depth of field, the field of view, and more.
• Arrow keys: To move the free camera, you can use the Up, Down, Left and Right buttons on your keyboard.
• Middle mouse scroll: Change the speed at which the camera moves with the directional buttons. Scrolling forward speeds up the camera movement.
• Left mouse button: Click and hold the mouse button to drag the viewpoint of the camera around.

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How to use depth of field in ACC

Adding depth of field to your image can make a huge change to how your photo looks. Real-world cameras can utilise the aperture and other tools to adjust the depth of field. In Assetto Corsa Competizione we can utilise these same tools.

To enable and adjust the depth of field in ACC follow the steps below;

1. Enable depth of field: The first thing to do is enable depth of field from the cinema HUD. Simply toggle the menu to “enabled”.

2. Set your aperture to f/1.5: You can set the aperture to whatever figure you like for your photo. The lower the number, the greater the depth of field effect will be. You can see the difference in the images below. The left image is set with an aperture of f/18 and the right set to f/1.5.

3. Change the focal length to around 35mm: The focal length corresponds to the style of lens you wish to emulate. Real-world cameras range from a focal length of 16mm and 100mm upwards. The lower the number, the more fisheye the effect will look. Increasing the focal length will require you to move the camera further from your subject and will increase the size of items in the background. A good starting point is around 35mm for a realistic TV-style image.

4. Set the focus distance: The focus distance adjusts where the focus of the photo will be. You can toggle between near and far to change which part of your image is in focus. I normally set this to “Far” and around “10m”. Increase or decrease your distance depending on how far from the camera the car is. The images below show the focus distance far away making the car blurry and at the right distance making the background blurry.

5. Change the blade count to 16: All camera lenses have physical blades that move and cover the lens. Increasing the blade count in ACC will result in smoother looking background blur. Lowering the blade count will increase the hardness of the blur. Changing this to 16 will make the depth of field as smooth as possible, although it doesn’t have a huge impact in photos in ACC.

With all of those tips followed, you should have pretty good depth of field in your photos.

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How to get motion blur in photos

Now we have all of the tools to start capturing really realistic-looking photos. The only piece missing is the motion blur. When you’re editing the camera position and settings above, you’ll notice that the whole scene looks very static, and this is because nothing is moving.

To capture motion blur in ACC, we need to have the car moving. The best way to capture motion blur is to use the playback speed controls and be ready to press F12 to capture the perfect screenshot at the right time.

Below is an overview of how to capture motion blur in ACC.

1. Position your camera, depth of field and all settings to be perfect.
2. Rewind the footage by 5 or 10 seconds.
3. Set the playback speed to 0.5 or 0.75.
4. Hit play and be ready for the perfect moment.
5. Press F12 when you want to screenshot the action.

It can sometimes be tricky to capture the exact moment you’re after using the current Assetto Corsa Competizione replay. Slowing the playback speed will make it easier to time your screenshots, and you can press F12 as many times as you like to create a few screenshots at once.

If you do miss the perfect moment, simply rewind 5 or 10 seconds and try again. Once you have the perfect shot, you can load your image in Photoshop or any photo editing software to make colour balance adjustments if required.

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