It pushes the local contrast at very tight radius, here at pixel level, also known as unsharp mask 
It is often pushed by default to higher levels, because it gives the illusion of an higher resolution/sharper image, and may overcome little eyesight problems too.
PS: next time, try the macro function of your phone if available, we want to see phosphors! ehm, lcds 
my phone camera is not the best and couldn’t find macro options. this is what I got at the moment: exposure is probably not the same, maybe tonight I will try with my “real” camera even tho I have no macro lenses.
This is what I could manage to do with handholding my phone with one hand and changing options with the other one 
This is from my actual aperture grill preset (with scanlines) from the snes 240p suite main menu, with mask 6 (vivid zero) for the shot I just removed any deconvergence.
this one is a slot mask preset (no scanlines). I highlighted what I think is the mask pattern.
How do they look? any glaring problems?
sure is difficult to get focus on those shots
The shots are good enough for me to see that there seems to be an issue with the Mask Layout or it could have to do with the width.
Why are there black gaps on either side of the green “phauxsphor”?
Can you take a pic using Mask width 0, and also with Mask Layout 1 for comparison sake please?
You might get better shots if you lower your ISO, lock your focus and stabilize your camera.
Mask width is always 0 for me, this is taken with:
#reference "shaders_slang/crt/crt-guest-advanced.slangp"
glow = "0.000000"
no_scanlines = "0.050000"
shadowMask = "6.000000"
maskstr = "1.000000"
post_br = "1.100000"
from the grey area (shadow) near the feet of the 240p guy.
snes9x, Integer scaling is ON.
this is with:
#reference "shaders_slang/crt/crt-guest-advanced.slangp"
glow = "0.000000"
no_scanlines = "1.500000"
shadowMask = "1.000000"
maskstr = "1.000000"
it looks funky on screen and it was more difficult to take this shot
Just for info, masks 0,5 and 9, which use the magenta-green coloring, are rgb-lcd feature exploiting true RGB masks with even subpixel spacings. TVL is quite high, but they are very good for 1080p.
Ofc. taking a screenshot (not a photo) and enlarging the image will produce alternate magenta-green patterns, but on native display resolutions they are RGB.
that is very interesting! that’s why mask 9 looks very natural on my monitor despite the green-magenta, and I was wandering why I didn’t get any funky tinting with mask 9…
EDIT: quick shot of mask 9 with
#reference "shaders_slang/crt/crt-guest-advanced.slangp"
glow = "0.000000"
no_scanlines = "0.050000"
shadowMask = "9.000000"
maskstr = "1.000000"
post_br = "1.100000"
looks awesome to me!
Well, the image does look more vivid, so I’d say it works as advertised.
It would be nice to get a modern refresher as to why this works in layman’s terms so that a child can understand it.
I’ve always shied away from Magenta Green Masks, thinking they weren’t capable of producing RGB triads.
I researched a lot of old posts which stated that that’s what they really were supposed to accomplish but would love even more information. For e.g. Screenshot and display photo showing how all of them should look when correctly applied as well as when incorrectly applied and when it’s best to use them.
I wanted to ask but I was afraid I wouldn’t understand much!
I stumble upon mask 9 due to some monitor trouble and now turns out is actually the best way to go for my 1080p monitor! now all my preset are mask 9 based ahah
Today or tomorrow I will share the whole thing!
that’s clever, but how about the spacing?
What do you mean, if the mask has space, it will draw a space, there’s no magic, just put it on paper and the trick will be revealed
New Release Version (2024-02-04-r1):
Notable changes:
Download link:
https://mega.nz/file/U0AQ0B4R#SDXzQmPLBhyrtlMGxAZ8W4YV21BB9qwJXjTsP9cLi8I
I love you lol. Can’t wait to try this out soon.
Edit:
@guest.r So I gave it a quick spin, I turned the rainbow setting up to 1.00, fringing setting at 0, artifacting up to 1.50 and chroma scaling from 4.00 to 3.00 (I’ll explain why below).
That’s indeed the sharpest I’ve gotten composite to look with the Mega Drive rainbows added in and I will definitely be replacing my “md rainbow” presets with this look on my next update.
So for the chroma scaling part I noticed when using the rainbow setting with chroma turned up to 4 I see these weird vertical lines. Notice the rock Sonic is standing on:
Chroma scaling at 3 the lines dissapear or at least I don’t notice them:
I’m not sure why that is but just something I noticed.
Coloring with the ntsc shaders is done with application of trigonometrical functions, and effects like interference patterns might occur with a certain set of circumstances. I did manage to reproduce the mentioned effect…
Chroma scaling and rainbowing are heavy tweaks uppon the original idea, and I’m also glad to read that lowering chroma scaling to 3.0 brings normal results.
Good that you were able to reproduce it, I was also wondering if that was something occurring off of my presets alone. At least this information can now be used by everyone going forward.
Edit: Chroma scaling at 2.75 completely eliminates those lines, at 3.0 there were still some faint lines I noticed in the clouds in Sonic.
I like this new setting to increase the rainbow coloring but I can’t get a good look on both the Sonic waterfall and the Street of Rage 2 spotlights in the second stage.
