Photo Modes are a rewarding way to get to grips with some essential elements of photography, while letting you more closely examine and appreciate a game’s art design and increasingly photorealistic visuals. Feature-rich Photo Modes put an entire suite of virtual lighting rigs at your fingertips, subtracting concerns about space requirements, or the patience of your models as you get your composition just right.
Insomniac in particular continues to bring a superheroic heft to its photographic options, first established through its Marvel’s Spider-Man games, with Marvel’s Wolverine. The game’s out for just over a month, and we continue to be dazzled by the Photo Mode skills players have displayed since launch. We’ve equally had questions from budding shutterbugs asking for guidance on how to better their shots. Here, we unpack some of the options the studio offers up in Photo Mode and some examples to get you thinking.
Warning: some of the photos here are spoilers for the game’s outfits and mid-game content
Set up tips
Chapter select: Once you’ve rolled credits, loading your save file will pop you back in Logan’s cabin. Head to the bed to access a chapter select menu, letting you leap into any location or moment from the story. From Canada’s snowy wilderness, neon-soaked Shinjuku arcades, to the compact districts of Madripoor and more, you got plenty of backdrops, blockbuster moments and quieter character moments to work with.
Photo Mode UI repositioning: Insomniac has packed in a multitude of options in its Photo Mode to cater to every need you’d have. That includes up to 5 independent lighting rigs (plus customisable natural light options!), character poses, miniature mode, filters and more. Extensive options means a chunky, multi-tab Photo Mode UI. Remember: if you find the UI is blocking your shot, you can tap a button to alternate it between the left and right of your screen.
D-Pad Shortcuts: As default you access Photo Mode from the Pause menu, but jump into Settings, and you can map a shortcut to Photo Mode to the DualSense’s D-Pad. And while you’re there, assign another D-Pad button to adjust the game speed, letting you reduce game speed by 30, 50 or 70%. Useful when you want to capture the perfect action moment.
Landscape, portrait or between: You can use the Tilt option to angle the camera from a straight landscape shot, to a dramatic dutch angle, or a 9×16 portrait image. You’ll need to tilt your own head to better compose the shot with that last option (or, if you’re playing on a PlayStation Portal, just turn the handheld device on its side).
I see five lights
A headline feature of Marvel’s Wolverine Photo mode is five independent lights, each offering separate colour spectrums, intensity options, adjustable distances and such. You can choose each light to be Sphere (casting a wider glow from their centre) or Spotlights (a stronger directional beam).
One to two lights: That can seem daunting, but you don’t have to use them all! In fact, for individual portrait shots, just one or two will do. In photography terms, two lights cover your key light, and your rim light. The former is the main light, illuminating your subject from the front. Play about with having thi