Have you ever used ReShade? (with before and after examples)

[Zed Clampet]

ReShade is an app that adds shaders and effects (that you select) to any game. The number of options is just crazy. Here are some before and after pictures I just made in Farming Simulator 22. I haven't gotten it perfect yet. There are so many options, I'm just playing to see what everything does. It's kind of hard to play without this now.

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

I have slightly too much saturation in these pictures, but that's easily fixed. But the originals look dim and have less definition. Just, to my eyes, a huge improvement.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

You can use this in any game? That's really awesome!

 

[Alm]

Looks great. I wonder if it would drastically improve the look of older games too. Is it a resource hog?

 

[Brian Boru]

I messed with it a bit a few years ago. Something broke and I dropped it.

use this in any game?

No, but in a lot of games—I forget, but if I recall correctly, it's linked to DirectX version—which probably also means OpenGL and Vulkan versions.

Some online games will ban you for using this or similar mods.

I wonder if it would drastically improve the look of older games too

Dunno, probably depends on which DirectX etc version the game supports.

Is it a resource hog?

Overall, it's unsurprisingly mostly GPU bound, so won't go well on a weak one. Your resolution will also affect it—eg 4 times the load at 4K v 1080p.

Game by game, it'll mostly depend on which effects you tweak.
Easy stuff like contrast & brightness & maybe AA should have little impact;
Heavier stuff like anisotropic filtering and bloom should have a significant impact—probably motion blur and depth of field too, maybe draw distance… dunno.

ReShade is what's called a 'post processor', it takes GPU output and plays with it before sending the changed result onto your screen. Naturally that's a load—standard advice for improving GPU performance is to disable all post processing.

 

[Zed Clampet]

You can use this in any game? That's really awesome!

Mostly any modern game. You need DX9 or later. OpenGL and Vulcan are fine.

Is it a resource hog?

For how I used it, no. Most post processing isn't too resource heavy anyway. There might be some features like AA and others that could drag you down a bit, but I mostly played around with colors and sharpness.

As for older games, the game has to be DX9 or later.

 

[Zed Clampet]

standard advice for improving GPU performance is to disable all post processing.

That's the standard advice not because post processing is so resource intensive, but because it is mostly stuff easily lived without, like motion blur, depth of field, film grain, etc. You can usually disable all post processing and actually notice that your game looks better than before.

 

[Brian Boru]

Most post processing isn't too resource heavy anyway

Good to hear, haven't looked into it in years, and presumably the ReShade team have optimized a lot in the meantime. Your After pics look great, looking forward to your further experiments 🙂

 

[Zed Clampet]

Good to hear, haven't looked into it in years, and presumably the ReShade team have optimized a lot in the meantime. Your After pics look great, looking forward to your further experiments 🙂

I'm not an expert on it by any means, but from years of seeing what happens when I get rid of film grain and motion blur, etc. I assume most of that kind of stuff isn't too hard on your GPU. I could be wrong, but I think the biggest hits are usually shadows, AA depending on what type you are using, ambient occlusion SSAO-reflections, and fog. I guess maybe fog depends on how it's created.

But what I should have said was that I didn't mess with any of these things in ReShade and stuck to the simple stuff like colors and clarity.

 

[Ryzengang]

Yea, I've used it in Resident Evil 2 (remake) because the AA is a shimmering mess. Reshade does an excellent job of cleaning up the visuals in that game.

 

[Zloth]

Horizon: Zero Dawn shaders off

Shaders on

But there was a catch on this one. Whenever I turned off the HUD for a clean screenshot, the shaders faded out over about two seconds! I didn't ever figure out why. I would have to try and turn off the HUD then take a screenshot as fast as I could to get any shader effects! After a while, I just stopped bothering with the shader.


I remember cranking up the saturation in Skyrim, too. There was a mod that acted a lot like ReShade, but it wasn't any sort of shader - it just modified the colors in the game itself. That was a lot simpler to install and use.

 

[Zed Clampet]

I'm a little on edge today apparently. I was playing with the shaders and clicked on flipbook and this giant head rises up on the screen and winks at me. It scared the ever-loving sh!t out of me.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Horizon is a tough one because it looks great already. Just from looking at those two pictures, it doesn't seem like a huge improvement. Unless you weren't able to capture it before it faded.

 

[Zloth]

A little more saturation definitely helped.

Honestly, that seems to be a pretty common thing. I wonder why that is? The developers could make higher saturation if they wanted. Too much is bad, of course, but they always seem to be more washed out than seems appropriate - especially for a video game!

 

[Zed Clampet]

A little more saturation definitely helped.

Honestly, that seems to be a pretty common thing. I wonder why that is? The developers could make higher saturation if they wanted. Too much is bad, of course, but they always seem to be more washed out than seems appropriate - especially for a video game!

What gets me is that when I sharpened the picture, I was able to see detail that I couldn't see before on some of the machines. Why would add great detail to the machinery and then blur the picture so that some of it doesn't show up?

Honestly, I knew Farming Simulator wasn't the best looking game out there (but don't tell the fanboys this. They'll run you out of town), but I didn't realize how hideous it actually was until I started cleaning it up.

Here's where I ended up:

Before (blurry and muted)

After (crisp and vibrant)

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Farming Simulator definitely looks much better.