Trying to remove The Witcher 3 filter...

The Witcher 3 final version ended up having a fantasy look due to post-grading filter/filters CD Project RED applied after showing us 2013 and then 2014 demo's, which had more realistic, gloomier, and grittier colors.

I want to achieve those colors, but without changing gamma, contrast, brightness, and without sacrificing (or sacrificing minimally) contrast. There are several existing profiles already available on NexusMods, but most of them alter gamma, contrast, and brightness of the game, which ruins the immersion for me.

Which shader should I use to ONLY remove/add/change R, G, or B? The Witcher 3 has a yellow-ish filter applied to it. I was hoping I could offset it by applying a light tint. Since yellow mostly uses R, and G, then I would either reduce them or add more B. How do I make it all happen? Which shader do I need to use for this?

Color Matrix - that's the shader I need, isn't it? Usually RGB uses 0-255 values and for yellow it would be R (255, 255, 0), G(255, 255, 0). If I wanted to offset yellow with blue to get neutral colors, then I'd have to use B(0, 0, 255)

Color Matrix uses decimal system, which is hard to figure out. I assume that with Color Matrix system, 0 = 0, and 1 = 255...

Hm... Changing values to remove some Red, some Green, and add some Blue makes the game more like E3, less fantasy-like, BUT also darker. I guess I need to use another shader to change brightness, or contrast, or gamma?

Here's what I got so far:

Fantasy Colors (Vanilla):


E3 / Realistic Colors (ColorMatrix Shader Applied):



I was hoping to create my first NexusMods mod for Witcher 3. Here's what I though I would say in the Description part:

I really disliked the yellow-ish fantasy-color filter/tint applied to Witcher 3. It is very similar to the yellow filter/tint added to games such as the original/first Deus Ex: Human Revolution release and Dying Light. As far as I know, CD Project RED has done that to compensate for the downgraded lighting system in the final version of the game, but the E3 previews had the original high-quality lighting system without the fantasy-colors filter/tint. Regardless of the reasons, this fantasy-color filter/tint does not fit the theme, ambiance, and the lore of The Witcher series, which were always known to be gloomy and gritty.

I wanted my game to look as neutral and possible with colors similar to those seen in E3 previews. I tried several E3 ReShade/SweetFX presets found on NexusMods and thought they were generally good, but most of them utilized many shaders at once (Levels, Tone Map, Curves, ColorMod, etc.) and in addition to reducing the appearance of fantasy-color filter, they often altered, shadows, contrast, brightness, gamma, and other graphical aspects of The Witcher 3 game. Using so many shaders and settings can easily ruin the original image depth players perceived with vanilla colors. For those who calibrate their monitors to enjoy the highest video fidelity possible, having the correct image depth an accurate image is very important.

I decided to make a ReShade preset that preserves most image aspects to look as close to the accurate original/vanilla image as possible, but with more neutral colors and with less fantasy-color filter appearance. This mod does not touch gamma, brightness, contrast, image depth, etc. - it adjusts ONLY colors and makes the image slightly darker, which offsets the overly bright fantasy colors. I created this mod on my calibrated display with very accurate colors and I expect this mod to look best on properly and accurately calibrated displays also. This mod adds stronger presence of Blue and reduces presence of Red and Green to offset the Yellow-ish fantasy-colors filter/tint (yellow = red + green).

I used ReShade 2.0.3f1 and a single shader - Color Matrix to make all the changes.

Future Plans:
- Depends on the feedback...

HSV allows for individual configuration of color density.