Hello! I was wondering what you use to do your graphics, they’re so pretty. Do you use PS and a PSD or is it just your game? I love your pictures :)

Hiya! I do use Photoshop. 🙂 I used to tweak all my pictures manually, but lately I’ve been using Kaleekalo’s Clean & Clear actions – they’re quick, easy, and make everything bright and colorful without being too overedited. My Photoshop knowledge is abysmal, so I rely on the skills and generosity of others. :3

Thank you for the kind words! ❤

May I ask what type of computer you play your Sims game on?

Sure! I have a Gateway desktop that I ordered online for $550 about three years ago:

I’ve made a few changes to it since I got it: put in an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 graphics card, a new power supply, and a 250 GB SSD (which was originally just for Simming but it’s so fast I can’t help using it for everything <3). It has room to upgrade to 16 GB of RAM, but I haven’t felt the need to do that yet. Otherwise, all the components are the ones that were factory-shipped with my machine. 🙂

Aside from needing the motherboard replaced less than a year after I got the computer, I haven’t had any problems with it and it runs the game perfectly on the highest settings (and loads my 17 GB of custom content in 20-25 minutes).

Side note: I have an old square monitor because I’ve been too lazy to update to a flashy widescreen one. 😛

Your Sims 2 pictures always look great and high quality! How do you do it? Do you just have a really good graphics card or do you touch them up a little with photo editing software?

Hi hi! ❤ I do have a pretty nifty graphics card – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 – which lets me play the game with all settings on high, smooth edges, etc. But I do photoshop my screenshots – nothing crazy, mostly just some brightening and making the colors more vivid. I used to tweak everything manually, but lately I’ve been using Kaleekalo’s Clean & Clear actions with some occasional adjustments afterward. 🙂

WCIf ur default skin+eyes and where u get ur hairs and clothes from, thanks and ur game is perff

Thank you, anon friend! 😀 (You’ve made me realize I should make a resource page soon. And probably put a link to my WCIF/replies tags.)

My default skins are Mayberries’ Invasion skins. I’ve been using them for the longest time and I lovelovelove them. ❤ However, when I reinstalled using the Ultimate Collection, I redid my custom skins folder and regeneticized everything on my own personal scale – so I also use Apple Pie skins, Apple Pie v2 skins, Honey skins, and Honey skins (freckled) by lilith-sims and add-ons by sim-strangers.

My default eyes are Remix by keoni-chan (you can get the full set HERE). Again, I’ve been using these for ages and have no intention of swapping them out anytime soon. ❤ (I used to have other custom sets, but aside from some alien eyes I’ve been using, I deleted all the other sets I had except for these.)

Hair and clothes – hm, I could go on for ages! I’ll give you some suggestions now to keep you busy, anon, but then I have to go to work. 😛 I’ll try to update this later, or make a full-blown resource page soon! 🙂

Hair (I only use hair in Remi’s Maxis-match textures/colors):

selenaq13 (probably constitutes 90% of my hair folder <3)
vadie
poppet-sims (her older hair downloads are in Remi’s colors/textures, although if you’re interested, she’s been retexturing massive amounts of hair in her own lovely Maxis-match colors now!)
alienpod (has lovely Maxis-match unnaturals)
eatfishcustard (a HUGE collection of hairs that allisas was kind enough to organize and tooltip *_* <3)

Clothes:

jedpie/Trapping/trappingdownloads (Lina is no longer actively creating, but she is undoubtedly one of the most prolific TS2 creators we’ve ever seen ❤ you will spend DAYS going through her downloads, then you’ll go back a week later and still find things you didn’t see the first time around)
Amaryll
bunsblr/bunhead
whattheskell/Skell/downloadsbyskell
sanneke94
rented-space
yandereplumsim
Sentate
Yuxi/yuxi-downloads
keoni-chan/keonidownloads
eltaninz
serabiet/io-downloads
Catofevilgenius
fanseelamb/Fanseelamb (excellent source for practical male clothes <3)
fakepeeps7 (everything you’ll ever need for your sim kidlets)

Of course, although it’s no longer being updated, trappingcrushes is an excellent source of Sims 2 finds (utilize the tag system to narrow down what you’re trying to find), and I should note that a lot of the clothes I use in-game are default replacements – be sure to raid the database! 🙂

Whew! Hope that’s enough to keep you busy for awhile! 😉

is windham university something that can be downloaded or is it something you made? it’s absolutely stunning btw!

Hey, thanks anon! Windham University is a custom uni subhood I’ve been building from scratch. 🙂 It’s not available for download, but if you want you can search through this tag and this tag to see pictures from it. I’ve only constructed one dormitory and two community lots so far – the rest is all hood deco. 😉 There should be some neighborhood view pics in those tags if you want to see how it’s coming along as a whole!

If you have any questions on anything specifically, feel free to ask!

Hi :) I saw your post about the free Sims 2 Ultimate Collection off Origin, and I was wondering if maybe you could give me a progress report or something so I know how it works. I want to install (because that is an epic deal, I’d save about $100) but because of previous problems with crappy second hand disks, if I want it to work properly, I’m probably going to have to return my computer to factory settings, worth it if it works. Anything you can tell me about it would be appreciated! Thanks :)

Hi there! Well, for starters, the download itself took me about a solid day – I started it at 7:30 PM, let it run all night, and it was finally done when I came home from my thirteen-hour shift at work the next day. 😛

Before installing the Ultimate Collection, though, I suggest you backup the files from your current game – neighborhoods, custom content, etc. – because you should uninstall the previous version & expansion packs before installing the Ultimate Collection. From what I’ve read, having both installed causes problems, and if you try to remove one or the other after the fact, things stop working and it’s just not fun. 😦 So avert this problem by completely uninstalling your previous game – this may need to be done manually, and I also suggest cleaning out your registry files before installing the Ultimate Collection.

Now, aside from my Downloads folder (which I kept intact and plopped into my new Ultimate Collection folder), I planned on restarting my game. So even though I backed up my old hoods, I don’t plan on reinstalling them. From what I’ve read, you should be able to just take your backups and plop them into the new folder and resume playing, but this isn’t something I’ve tried for myself so I’m afraid I can’t personally confirm that this works. Maybe one of my followers can shed some light on this?

As far as restoring your computer to factory settings, I can’t see why you would need to do this? Feel free to message me again if there are other circumstances involved – just going based on my own experience, I don’t see why you’d need to do this. 🙂

At the very least, I’d suggest redeeming the download code from Origin before July 31st – even if you’re not sure about the computer situation or how to completely backup & uninstall your previous installation, once you have the code redeemed you can download and install it at any time. 🙂 Too good an opportunity to pass up!

(Posting publicly so my followers can add their own input!)

Edit: So far lovely-wow and namea have both confirmed that copying old saves into the new install location works fine. 🙂 Thank you both for your input!

Is broad hollow available for download? It is really beautiful, I need a city neighborhood to download but I haven’t been able to find one :(.

Hey anon! Unfortunately, Broad Hollow is not for download. 😦 I’m not entirely sure it’s possible to share an occupied neighborhood, and even if it is, I’m beyond certain that it will make your game go ~boom~ (too much potential for corruption). However! I will be more than happy to point you in the direction of the resources I used to build it up myself. 🙂

The terrain is Avonlea by xbeccyx. It’s a lovely flat terrain with plenty of space for development and decorating. In retrospect, though, I probably should’ve picked a smaller terrain for an urban neighborhood – it’s difficult to get that dense, crowded city look when the terrain is so spacious. I have more space than I know what to do with. D: If you’d like to check out other terrains, voleste makes some of my favorites – I’m using Plockton for my university subhood at the moment. 🙂
Hood deco is the real miracle worker for me! My building skills are abysmal, and there are a grand total of six residential lots and perhaps four or five community lots that I built in Broad Hollow – only the diner is located in the “urban” area. The rest is all hood deco! I basically just plunked random buildings down to surround the other lots in the area – it looks super haphazard in hood view, but it makes wonderful background scenery in lot view (good for screenshots!). My go-to creators for hood deco: CuriousB, Delonariel, Criquette.
I tried to create most of the lots myself, but I find building to be very time-consuming – when I finally have a chance to Sim, I usually want to play or decorate. So, I raided the Sims Community Project to find some CC-free lots that I could plunk down and re-decorate as I needed. 🙂 I have Bumblebee Square by allisas, Simqualizer Nightclub by immlegacy, and Plumbbob Park by slyndseysims. 🙂

Here is a crappy diagram. 😀

Pink circles are my own lots (wow, much box, so talent), green circles are lots I’ve downloaded from others. The rest is the magic of HOOD DECO! and my sad attempt at landscaping with trees. (Seriously, look at all the trees. I DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO WITH ALL THIS SPACE.)

I hope that helps you, anon! If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. 😀

Hi, I don’t know if you’ve posted this before, but I was just wondering what you use to take and edit your pictures? They always look so nice!

Hi simtellectual! I’m pretty Photoshop-illiterate, so it makes me really happy to hear you say you like my pictures. :3 *giddy* I really don’t do too much to them. My “standard” edit is to increase the vibrancy by 50 and the saturation by 10, increase the brightness anywhere from 30-70, and decrease the contrast by 10-20. I tweak each setting based on the screenshot I’m editing (for example, sometimes I won’t touch the vibrancy at all). But yeah, that’s basically it. No fancy actions or anything. 😛 OH, and I also resize all of them to about 65-70%.

Here’s a before and after comparison:

Thank you again for your message! ❤

how did you get the pretty ocean water on lots?

Hey anon! I’m not entirely sure what you mean, so I’m going to attempt to approach this from several ways. XD

If you mean the actual quality of the ocean water, I think that’s a combination of a good graphics card and some handy-dandy Photoshop. After playing TS2 for years and years on a crappy computer, I finally built one about two years ago that enables me to run all the game settings on high (except shadow settings, but that’s a different story…~~thanks NVIDIA~~ *digresses*). Before posting, I run all my screenshots through Photoshop to brighten them/adjust the colors, which can sometimes make the graphics look better than they actually are in-game. :3 #falseadvertising

I do have niol’s Pond Water Mod, but I’m fairly certain the version I installed has no effect on ocean water. (It does make pond water super nice, though. :D)

If you were just asking how I got ocean water on lots in general, well, the particular screenshots I posted were from one of the vacation destinations from Bon Voyage, ocean water already included. :3 Of course, with the right neighborhood terrain, you could also build beach lots so your Sims can have pretty ocean water right in their backyard. 😀

(I’m sorry if this response was terribly basic and I just rambled on about things you already know, sometimes I feel like I’m explaining kindergarten material to a college student when I answer asks like this, but I NEVER KNOW who the anon is on the other side so I like to cover all my bases. D:)

(Also sorry for making you wait so long for a response. D:)