PC gamers are e'er looking for ways to get the best graphics quality possible, hence why Hard disk texture packs and mods are so popular. And if your reckoner tin can handle it, you tin can download photorealistic ENB shaders for a huge catalogue of games – only most of these ENB and SweetFX shaders are user-made. What if you wanted to brand your ain from scratch? Where would you showtime?

In this Appual's guide, nosotros'll be going through the nuts of installing and configuring ReShade, a popular shader add-on for DirectX games that has a smaller functioning impact than ENB serial – thus, ReShade tin exist used fifty-fifty on older computers for minimal performance bear on, whereas ENB typically hooks into the game's scripts itself, and tin can chop your framerates in half (though if your estimator tin can handle it, ENB can be much prettier than SweetFX / ReShade – we'll leave ENB tutorials for another day).

Requirements:

ReShade

(Optional) Additional shader packs:

  • MassFX
  • Shaders by Ioxa
  • ReShade 2.0 Shaders ported to ReShade 3.0
  1. Begin by downloading the Reshade installer bundle and installing information technology on your calculator.
  2. Now you're going to choose the .exe file for the game you want to piece of work with – Reshade will ask you to choose an API, typically you'll want to apply the DirectX version that you lot're running the game in.
  3. You should now accept a binder structure in the game binder which contains a ReShade DLL (can be dxgi.dll, d3d9.dll, opengl32.dll, etc), and a binder "reshade-shaders" with a couple subfolders "Shaders" and "Textures".
  4. At present you can launch your game and press Shift + F2 to open the ReShade overlay menu. It will show you a brief tutorial, so but become through it.
  5. To make configuring things a bit easier, click on the Settings push button and alter the Input Processing selection to "Cake all input when overlay is visible".
  6. If y'all don't see whatever shaders in the main tab, or you downloaded custom shader packs, await in the Settings menu for where ReShade should look for its shaders. Typically It should exist <game dir>\reshade-shaders\Shaders and Textures. Then click on "Reload" in the Hometab, and all of the available shaders should appear.
  7. Now you can enable effects in the Dwelling house tab – the variables for configuring the effects are in the lower expanse, and you tin can search through them. It's pretty intuitive, basically like a huge Graphics Options menu.
  8. One thing to remember is that if yous're going to use depth based furnishings (HBAO / MXAO, Depth of Field, or some SMAA depth effects), you need to configure the preprocessor definitions co-ordinate to any notes that are specific for the game you are working on – you can discover a huge list of Games and recommended depth-based definitions on the Reshade website, or their forums for any troubleshooting communication.
  9. Afterward you configure all of the effects, information technology volition take some time to compile all of the shaders and use them to the game – it will go through this every fourth dimension you launch the game, or alt-tab back and forth in and out of the game. To make this process faster, you lot can either delete the shaders you lot don't utilise (by moving them into subfolders), or enable Performance Fashion in the Settings tab. By enabling Performance Mode, it renders all of the variables static (meaning they tin can't exist edited until Operation Mode is disabled), simply it will speed up compilation a lot, and likewise increase the framerate overall (every bit ReShade won't be scanning the shaders in the background to see which ones information technology needs to apply).

How to apply SweetFX with ReShade iii.0

If for some reason you lot want to combine SweetFX with ReShade, you can follow this installation procedure. The only thing to be aware of is that you lot will not exist able to configure SweetFX in real-time through the ReShade GUI within the game – you demand adapt all config variables from a SweetFX config format to the ReShade .ini file.

  1. Install ReShade as nosotros went through earlier, but do not use the shaders from the GitHub repo – delete them if yous already installed them. Technically you lot could use them all together, but it would create a lot of confusion for a beginner. So merely delete the "Shaders" and "Textures" folders where yous installed ReShade (in the game directory).
  2. Now put your SweetFX folder and the Sweet.fx file into the game binder side by side to ReShade.DLL – don't copy over ReShade.fx, because information technology loads Sweet.fx and if you write over ReShade.fx with Sweet.fx, Sweetness.fx will be loaded twice and and so you lot'll have double effects which is super weird.
  3. Now launch your game, and ReShade volition load the Sweet.fx preset. Y'all can now configure SweetFX as usual, such equally keeping the game in Windowed mode while tweaking the SweetFX configuration file in something similar Notepad++.

Notes About Performance:

ReShade can exist used with either minimal performance impact (a few frames loss at nearly) if you lot're merely using some colour enhancement shaders, or it can admittedly cut your framerate more than half if you're enabling all the advanced shading techniques. Its by and large best practice to play with different things to notice the sweet spot, simply here is a general idea of what shaders should cost you in terms of FPS (this is accumulative, by the way – per effect).

  • Brightness and colour correction shaders should more often than not cost virtually ane% of your FPS.
  • Mail-processing filters like SMAA / FXAA should cost between ii% – 5%.
  • Sharpening and softening filters should cost about 2% – five% depending on effect blazon.

Advanced shaders like depth of field and bloom tin cost up to 20%, just this depends on your GPU blazon and the DOF / flower techniques beingness used.

The about expensive shaders will be the various ambient occlusion shaders (MXAO, HBAO, SSAO, etc) which can price between xxx% to 50% of your framerate, simply once again this depends on your GPU type and the specific shader technique being utilized.

Its really best to try the different shaders that do the same things, to see which versions run best on your PC. For example, its by and large agreed that:

  • Vibrance > Colorfulness
  • LumaSharp > Adaptive Sharpen
  • FXAA > SMAA

You can likewise forego some of these effects if you have a great monitor, for example you can skip using Vibrance shaders past just upping Digital Vibrance in your Nvidia / Catalyst panels. Also, some monitors tin do a lot of what ReShade does – for case, monitors that let Sharpening to be increased through the monitor'due south native settings. It's better to use that with cipher operation impact, than using sharpening techniques in ReShade, if your monitor supports it.

General Tips on Applying Shaders

LUT – Stands for "Await Up Table", and basically contains colour correction information from an outside source, which volition be a .PNG epitome. This is one of the best methods of applying color correction to your game with zero functioning affect, information technology simply requires some initial setup. Y'all need to grab the blank Lut.PNG from your ReShade textures folder, and so take some in-game screenshots of your gameplay.

At present using a plan like GIMP or PhotoShop, merge your gameplay screenshots and the LUT.PNG onto a single layer, and start adjusting the color curves of the screenshots. Only brand color edits, practice not employ any post-processing, LUT is only used for color correction. Basically, y'all are adjusting the colors of the screenshots and so that LUT volition apply these colors in-game! Think of it similar Photoshopping your gameplay in real-time.

Now export your piece of work as LUT.PNG, copy information technology over the original blank LUT.PNG inside your 'textures' binder in your game directory, and enable LUT.fx in ReShade. Your game should now appear exactly equally you edited the colors to appear in your photo editing programme. This is absolutely the best manner to apply color correction to your absolute liking with nada performance bear upon and no additional color-correction shaders.

LumaSharpen – It'due south a good idea to set this to an intensity of 1.0, a pattern of 'Normal', and and so adjust the clench with debug on so that information technology volition sharpen as much equally possible, without creating any white highlights. You can utilise a clench of around 0.2 for this.

Film Grain – For a nice subtle effect, you can ready the Signal to Noise ratio around xvi (so information technology volition only apply to shadows), the intensity to 1.0, and the variance to however visible you lot want the picture grade to exist – try starting at a variance of 0.five and conform from there to your liking.

Flower and Lens Flare – Your options for bloom volition typically exist Magic Blossom or Ambient Light – its best used in older games that have really aboriginal-looking Bloom furnishings, and then you tin can disable the Bloom setting in those games and and so apply it through ReShade.

Depth of Field – There'southward quite a few DOF techniques bachelor in ReShade, then you more often than not want to observe the i that works all-time for you, but also exist enlightened that DOF can be weird in some games. It gets practical to the entire screen, so it may blur for case some parts of the GUI or game menus. Generally, Matso DOF or Advanced DOF are the all-time DOF techniques to use, so you adjust the most/far blur curves and the blur amount, so that the shader won't accept whatsoever issue unless the in-game object is very shut to the game camera. Depth of Field issue requires that ReShade exist able to access the game's depth-buffer, and this is mostly not possible in multiplayer games (like Battleground), because people tin can hypothetically write wallhacks and stuff like that if they have access to the game engine's depth-buffer.

HQ4X – This can be used to shine some grainy or pixelated games. The settings are up to you lot, since it depends a lot on the type of smoothing you need.

MXAO – This is the most intense version of ambient occlusion and will bring your estimator to its knees in terms of framerate affect. If your computer tin can handle MXAO (and the game you're working with doesn't freak out and wait weird with MXAO being applied), the best manner to tweak information technology is via the black and white debug view, and then you tin see exactly what you're tweaking. Also use Indirect Lighting (SSIL) in combination for best event.

Surface Mistiness – This is really more for changing the art mode of the game, similar if you desire the textures to announced more similar oil paintings (like in DOTA 2).

UI Mask – This is for when you're using depth-furnishings like MXAO and DOF, and the result is being practical to the game'south UI and making it wait weird. Y'all tin have a screenshot of your gameplay (with UI / HUD visible), and then open the screenshot inside a photo editing program, and erase everything except the HUD / UI and arrive a transparent PNG. Now when y'all point UI Mask to this .png file, it volition apply the depth-effects to everything in the game except the $.25 you lot didn't erase in the PNG.