High Pass Sharpening / Contrast Enhancement

Thanks for the update Ioxa, even more settings to play with!

On that note, can you explain when I might want to disable the curvemask and instead use the AdjustHaloStrength mode? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each, and what results are both modes designed to achieve?

Mart

Martigen wrote: Thanks for the update Ioxa, even more settings to play with!

On that note, can you explain when I might want to disable the curvemask and instead use the AdjustHaloStrength mode? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each, and what results are both modes designed to achieve?

Mart

Curving the mask makes the halos stronger, which makes the effect stronger. I added the option to curve only the dark halos because when an image looks over sharpened it is usually because of the light halos. And I put in the option to curve only light halos just because.

The AdjustHaloStrength lets you adjust the strength of both the light and dark halos individually for better fine tuning. If the halos are clamped and you start increasing the halo strength it will look like the halo is getting bigger. It can get tedious to adjust but thats why I separated it from the other settings.

The best way to adjust it is while viewing the mask. If you don't clamp the halos and go back and forth between min and max values a couple times you should be able to spot the difference pretty quick.

Starcraft 2 has always looked soft to me. I used highpass sharpening to bring out the small details, and a tiny amount of luma sharpening on top to make them pop. I think it makes the textures look a little more HD without making them look "sharpened."






A few additional shots including the menu are in here:
imgur.com/a/AGY2M

NotAgOat wrote: Starcraft 2 has always looked soft to me. I used highpass sharpening to bring out the small details, and a tiny amount of luma sharpening on top to make them pop. I think it makes the textures look a little more HD without making them look "sharpened."

Warning: Spoiler!

A few additional shots including the menu are in here:
imgur.com/a/AGY2M

Thanks for sharing! You can really see the difference in the crystals in those first two pics and in the armor in those pics that you linked.

hi loxa.. i would to include your effect in reshade with mastereffect 1.1.287.. but i dont know how..can you help me??..im working in Rage and looks great.. but is the same problem with a very soft image and ohter sharpen shaders are not precise like yours..

Scorpio82CO wrote: hi loxa.. i would to include your effect in reshade with mastereffect 1.1.287.. but i dont know how..can you help me??..im working in Rage and looks great.. but is the same problem with a very soft image and ohter sharpen shaders are not precise like yours..

This one should work.
Download High Pass Sharpening / Contrast Enhancement for ReShade + SweetFX and MasterEffect

Rename the ReShade.fx file that comes with MasterEffect to ReShadeME.fx then put the files from the download into the same folder that you have ReShade installed in. Then open HighPass_settings.h and set Compatibility to 2. The instructions in the Readme are a little more detailed.

thanks for the explaining. i dont know how to start..this is my gift to you loxa..

Hi Ioxa!

Earlier in the thread I believe I remember you saying you weren't interested in making this like lumasharpen to 'avoid redundancy'. I'm using only Master Effects with ReShade core and am having real difficulty recreating the same look SweetFX offers me. Is there any chance you could point me in the right direction?

Lahdra wrote: Hi Ioxa!

Earlier in the thread I believe I remember you saying you weren't interested in making this like lumasharpen to 'avoid redundancy'. I'm using only Master Effects with ReShade core and am having real difficulty recreating the same look SweetFX offers me. Is there any chance you could point me in the right direction?

You could try this,
Set SharpMaskPrecision to 2.00, SharpMaskQuality to 0, BlendMode to 6, ClampDarkHalos to 0.47, ClampLightHalos to 0.53. From there you can adjust the strength.

Hey Ioxa, is this going to be in the Framework? Can't find it in 1.0. Also, to that end, do we need updated installation files to add it to 1.0?

Hi Ioxa,

I was able to get the Colorfilter to work in the Mediator but for some reason the Highpass shader wont stay loaded in the pipeline.cfg. It shows up in the tabs on top and if i edit the pipeline.cfg while the mediator is open, i can get reshade to load it once, but then it removes the #include EFFECT(HighPass, Sharp) from the pipeline file? It's really strange, because the tabs at the top of the mediator do show HighPass... Here is a screenshot of what i mean:

www.dropbox.com/s/m2vt2gaikasq1k4/mediator1.PNG?dl=0

sajittarius wrote: for some reason the Highpass shader wont stay loaded in the pipeline.cfg.

Had the same problem, don't forget to change the pipeline.cfg in ReShade\PersonalFiles\Presets\DefaultPreset as well while Mediator isn't running.

Martigen wrote: Hey Ioxa, is this going to be in the Framework? Can't find it in 1.0. Also, to that end, do we need updated installation files to add it to 1.0?

I'm still not satisfied enough with it to add it to the Framework. I want to come up with a way to do the mid-tone contrast enhancement dynamically instead of using a static mask and I want to figure out a more efficient way of doing the large blur for contrast enhancement, right now it's doing multiple passes and each of those passes is a performance hit. Once those are done I'll see if Lucifer is still interested in adding it to the Framework.

It's been working fine for me but I know others are having issues with this and the color filter shader so I'll have to see what might be causing the problems. At the very least I should update the install instructions since EffectOrdering.cfg was change to Pipeline.cfg. I'll also update the files to fit better with the new layout. But I'm going to combine my shaders into a single package and update it all at once so it may be a little bit, but hopefully within a week.

@sajittarius The only thing I can think of that would remove it from the pipeline would be what Mobeeuz said. Try adding it before starting the mediator or if you have the mediator running hit reset before applying any other changes.

Mobeeuz wrote:

sajittarius wrote: for some reason the Highpass shader wont stay loaded in the pipeline.cfg.

Had the same problem, don't forget to change the pipeline.cfg in ReShade\PersonalFiles\Presets\DefaultPreset as well while Mediator isn't running.

Hmm... i think i deleted that defaultpreset folder at some point lol. Can i recreate it?

sajittarius wrote: Hmm... i think i deleted that defaultpreset folder at some point lol. Can i recreate it?

I had to start over with a fresh download, adding the highpass shader by itself to get it working. Once I could successfully create a new preset without killing the highpass options, I added my existing presets (Backup the folder first!). Don't forget to add the highpass config for both folders.

Mobeeuz wrote:

sajittarius wrote: Hmm... i think i deleted that defaultpreset folder at some point lol. Can i recreate it?

I had to start over with a fresh download, adding the highpass shader by itself to get it working. Once I could successfully create a new preset without killing the highpass options, I added my existing presets (Backup the folder first!). Don't forget to add the highpass config for both folders.

Thanks, putting everything in fresh (and putting back the Default Preset) seemed to work.

Updated this make it work a little nicer with the new version of the Mediator. I also combined it with my color filter shader and a work in progress chromatic aberration shader, for now I'm calling the pack ioFX.

Download ioFX v1.0 for ReShade + Framework

Install Instructions for ioFX for Reshade + Framework

1. Make sure the Framework Mediator is not running.
2. Copy the ReShade folder to the folder that ReShade was installed to and merge it with the existing ReShade folder.
2.a) Overwrite the existing Pipeline.cfg or manually add the following lines to the existing Pipeline.cfg.

#include EFFECT(ioFX, Sharp)
#include EFFECT(ioFX, Clarity)
#include EFFECT(ioFX, ChroAb)
#include EFFECT(ioFX, ColorFilter)

3. Open the Mediator and enable the effects in the Pipeline tab. Adjust the shader settings in the ioFX tab.

I changed the name of the Contrast Enhancement shader to Clarity. The shorter name looks cleaner and probably a better description for people that may not know what local contrast enhancement is.

Cleaned up the settings a little. Got rid of some redundant settings, changed some of the names, and made some of the settings a little easier to adjust.

I'm still making adjustments as I learn more about coding and I'm always looking for ways to make these shaders easier to use. If you have any ideas, recommendations, or if I removed some settings you use, let me know!

Just wanted to thank you again for making this I use the contrast shader in pretty much every game now, it's so good at bringing out details that lumasharpen/high-pass don't.

I haven't tried version 1.0 yet but I will, need to update my profiles. I've also taken LOADS of shots before/after the contrast shader with various games that I'll get around uploading some time.

Just quickly looking at the ioFX.cfg file, are the DarkAmount and LightAmount defaults values are making it operate as before, but setting to 0.0 will focus mainly on mid-tones?

And on the name change, I have to say -- and this is just me -- I think Contrast Enhancement Sharpening or Enhanced Contrast Sharpening or similar would be better than Clarity Only because most shaders are named after what they do (like SMAA), and if someone is unfamiliar with Clarity they might not try it, when in essence it's a sharpening filter that, as above, catches all the things Lumasharpen/Highpass miss. Just my 2c for your awesome work Ioxa.

You're welcome Martigen! And thanks for the feedback you've given. Also looking forward to seeing your before/after screenshots!

The DarkAmount and LightAmount are a clamp for the dark and light halos. I changed them up so they work a little more like a strength adjustment, I think it makes more sense this way. Setting them to 0.0 means there is no halo.

The mid-tone adjustments have been changed to "blend if" adjustments that range from 0 - 255. If BlendIfDark is set to 0 and BlendIfLight is set to 255 then the effect will be applied to the entire image. If BlendIfDark is set to 50 and BlendIfLight is set to 205 then the effect will only be applied to pixels between 50 and 205. Still looking for ways to make this better but I think this is a big improvement over the previous way I had it set up.

For the name change I mainly wanted to shorten it. I feel like clarity is a pretty accurate description of what it does; gets rid of haze in some places, make objects stand out. But I'm never satisfied so maybe I'll change it up again at some point.

Shaders fail to compile with Reshade Framework 1.1. ioFX needs update.