Is there a guide for creating presets?

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:

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.

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:

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!

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.

JPulowski wrote:

There is no need for a guide.
 

To paraphrase The Dude, well, that's just like, your opinion, man.
There are multiple pieces of anatomy to the .INI file and it would be nice if the purpose and proper usage of each were clearly explained in an easily located guide.

Almost every user-created preset I have seen on sites like Nexus Mods contain an .INI file which has discrepancies between the shaders listed after Techniques=, the shaders listed after TechniqueSorting=, and the shaders then listed in square brackets with settings under each for the rest of the document.  Should these not all be the same, each having no more or less shaders referenced, sorted and defined within a single document?  If not, why?  The fact that I see this all the time is proof enough that there's a need for a guide.

Furthermore, I'm pretty sure I HAVE seen a guide for this file several months ago, but I can't seem to locate it anywhere now.  Why there isn't one on this site right under the FAQ link, now that's a mystery.

A preset is just an .ini file which defines:

1) reshade specific settings (is the depth map inverted/logorithmic/flipped -- that's game engine specific).
2) which shaders are used
3) the order of those shaders
4) the specific settings for those shaders (both preprocessor #defines and uniform variables settings).

Pretty sure that's it. I don't think I would call differences between user-defined presets as "discrepancies" -- I'd have to see a specific example of that to give my opinion.  Like if one guys' preset has a different order for the same shaders, that's not a discrepancy -- it's a choice.  However, if one guy's preset for the same game has different values for whether the depth buffer is flipped or logarithmic, yeah that's a "discrepancy" because one of them is just plain wrong.  Whether additional AA is done before or after Sharpening, that's a subjective choice and there are trade-offs either way.

As to "where to start" in making a preset -- that's really subjective between you and your pc and game. What exactly do you want to do? Are you looking for a vanilla+ experiences (anti-aliasing + sharpening)? Or are you looking to add ambient occlusion (you'll need perfect access to the depth buffer)? Are you looking to completly change the look of the game (color gradients + LUT + bloom)?   Maybe you're just looking to solve highly specific game engine problems -- like color banding (deband).

Yeah, there are some technical aspects (you probably always want bloom after sharpening/AA, film grain near the end and vignette goes last) to it but it's really subjective as to what looks good or not...  For example, I love film grain and fog effects.  However, "clarity" reshade presets exist for people who hate those effects and it's really popular.  A lot of people have crap LCD panels, so they'll want to adjust the gamma/contrast curve and levels -- My LCD's gamma and black/white contrast is amazingly and unexpectedly PERFECT, so adjustments the gamma curve will usually only make things look worse.

IMO unless someone's modifying/creating shader code to tailor those shaders (or make new ones) for that specific game, they shouldn't be putting their personal presets on places like nexus mods.

Daemonjax wrote:

IMO unless someone's modifying/creating shader code to tailor those shaders (or make new ones) for that specific game, they shouldn't be putting their personal presets on places like nexus mods.

Why not? Nexus has a specific category for Reshade related stuff which you can happily ignore if you don't like it. It is no different to share presets there as it is to here. I don't have any stats so I don't have exact knowledge, but I'm willing to bet a small amount for that  Nexus is either the first or second largest source for Reshade users and I have no doubt all the people involved in creating Reshade and the shaders do like that their work is not in vain. Of course I'm not one of them but I've been part in many similar and different projects and I've yet to see a person who finds it to be the more meaningful to do those projects the less people will see and enjoy them.