I want to get started and create my own presets from now on. I don't know where to start, I could not find a guide and wrap my head on how these people make presets for thelazy.net. Is there a guide? I usually just download presets but I'd like to make my own, I'm a total n00b, please help guide me in the right direction.

There is no need for a guide. A preset is actually just a settings file. For SweetFX, it is SweetFX_settings.txt. Just copy-paste its content after you finished tweaking everything and you have a preset.

But of course in order to share your settings, you need to create an account at the database. The rest should be easy.

JPulowski wrote:
ya but I guess my question is how do these people know what to tweak? There's like a billion options. I don't understand how anybody could interpret this data!

kgonepostl wrote: I see. There will be a ReShade wiki in the future, once everything becomes more stable.

To answer your question:
Read the descriptions of each effect. Understand what it does, for instance Vibrance effect boosts certain colors according to your liking. LumaSharpen effect sharpens the image, makes the details more visible. Curves effect changes overall contrast of the image, etc.

To get a better grip of each effect, first you need to play with them. See what happens when you change a setting or multiple settings. After you get a grip of several effects and know how to use them, just mix them and create a preset. This is basically what it is all about.

For example, if you want to create a "film noir" preset. What do you do? First you desaturate the image, make everything black-and-white. Then maybe you play with contrast a little, make it darker or lighter. Then you apply a film grain effect, to give it an analog film look. If the grain effect is too much, maybe you just lower the intensity a little bit. In the end, you tweak the settings until you get that feel. It is really similar to image editing, just like using Photoshop.