The corrected version definitely looks better, but perhaps maybe a little over-corrected/under-saturated. That could also be the bloom making it look a tad washed out, though. Hard to tell.
One thing I’ve noticed is that when you max out the RGB mask strength, it reduces the color saturation somewhat so that it looks more like your second shot but without the need for additional color mangling.
@Syh haha sorry. It’s still wip, so a bit of a mess. It was made for Cadillacs & Dinos, but these settings should go more or less well with a lot of arcades that look too bright and yellow. Edit: yes of course to screens and settings, will be looking forward to them.
target_gamma = "2.200000"
monitor_gamma = "2.200000"
overscan_percent_x = "0.000000"
overscan_percent_y = "0.000000"
saturation = "0.950000"
contrast = "1.050000"
luminance = "0.920000"
black_level = "-0.040000"
bright_boost = "-0.025000"
R = "0.970000"
G = "0.970000"
B = "1.030000"
ZOOM = "1.000000"
XPOS = "0.000000"
YPOS = "0.000000"
V_OSMASK = "0.000000"
H_OSMASK = "0.000000"
gamma_boost_r = "0.400000"
gamma_boost_g = "0.400000"
gamma_boost_b = "0.400000"
sat_r = "1.000000"
sat_g = "1.000000"
sat_b = "1.000000"
lum = "1.000000"
cntrst = "1.000000"
r = "1.000000"
g = "1.000000"
b = "1.000000"
rg = "0.000000"
rb = "0.000000"
gr = "0.000000"
gb = "0.150000"
br = "0.000000"
bg = "0.050000"
blr = "0.000000"
blg = "0.000000"
blb = "0.000000"
@Jamirus yeah man, I have been into emulation for 20 years or so, and colours almost always seemed off. Not only in arcade games, but everywhere else too. I don’t know if you follow this thread, but correcting them is my current crusade! Perhaps one day I will be able to release settings for all important systems. God bless Retroarch and its devs once again, for without it/them, all this would be impossible.
@Nesguy no it’s not perfect of course (the settings I just posted are a bit better actually). Those images are a little proof of concept, no more. Looking at them side by side, it’s easy to notice how horribly yellow the default output is. Nothing to do with bloom by the way. I could remove halation completely and the results would be the same. And yes, your method ‘desaturates’ a bit, very nicely, although it is difficult to gauge things due to darkness. That LttP shot you posted, your best attempt, looks terrific on a bright screen. Maybe you could post a Cadillacs and Dinos image so we can compare? It will take 5 minutes to beat the first stage, but that game is a lot of fun anyway!
@Squalo You’re good, lol. I just like to check out your color changes with my shader chain.
I’ll try to post some screenshots tomorrow.
Also will post my new color-mangler settings alongside the screenshots, if you want to check those out.
I don’t know what my screenshots look like on a screen that is not 4k, in my case when I look directly on my screen the 3 colors are aligned on several different shaders 
.And to see correctly my images, they must be downloaded and used with paint unfortunatly 
I have a link that will interest you! guest.r and Dr.Venom are trying to solve this problem http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?s=60bc0b887131607c350ada30d4206bd7&t=95969&page=12 
Absolutely no problem. The layout can be hard to understand.
The phosphors are definitely washed out in that shot, but I’m assuming that’s so that it looks adequately bright with a normal backlight setting. At least the phosphors in this shot are red, blue and green. Some of the shader masks I’ve seen use yellow, magenta, and cyan instead of RGB, which looks strange to me and obviously isn’t accurate.
What’s up with the third image? Looks like the slotmask overlay isn’t scaled properly to the image?
uncorrected:
corrected:
Uncorrected, with RGB mask and scanlines maxed out:
Must be viewed at full size with backlight at 100%, and I recommend moving back a bit from the display. A dark room also helps.
Settings: mask_light at 1.50 and mask_dark at 0.00. Lines_black at 0.00 and lines_white at 1.00. Amp 1.00, phase 0.00. Gamma 2.4. TVout-tweaks-multipass signal resolution set to 480. Integer Scale ON.
At the correct viewing distance (where the phosphors blend together), the color saturation looks to be somewhere between your corrected image and the uncorrected image, at least on a sufficiently bright display. Could maybe use a bit of color mangling, depending on preference. I think a slightly oversaturated look kind of works for this game, though.
@ProfessorBraun yes I know about their efforts, their shader is wonderful and @guest.r posts here sometimes. We have already talked about colour quite a bit on this very thread. To make my long part of the story short, simply changing the white point (or balance) is not ideal for me, because I want a cooler image without shifting reds towards magenta, and mr FilthyPants aka @hunterk developed a wonderful shader called color mangler that allows me to change things per channel . It’s slower and more convoluted but the results are much better imo. My crusade began at post 283, if you feel like reading more details and seeing images.
@Nesguy cool thanks. I still see a lot of ugly yellow, not good. I think you might want to add some form of colour correction to your chain.
@Nesguy Yes it was the goal I changed the parameters so that it is visible for any resolution, the third is a function of crt royale mask_sample_mode_desired “The 2.0 setting makes the mask tile without resizing, which results in a huge phosphor mask with the default mask textures, so it’s intended more for mask textures for a screen of a fixed size” @Squalo yes I am already aware of all this, I created an account that recently but I am an old reader of the forums for years, but even if I quote a name I think of new readers who follow the subject hehe 
just wanted to show what a PC crt monitor with scanlines look like, you can adjust thickness opening it up and rotating 2 potentiometers
pc crt almost full sharpness, 2560x240 120hz
after this i softened the scanlines a little but more, full sharpness looks kinda ugly, too much scanlines
a bit out of focus vertically the way i bought it, 640x480 60hz with scanlines overlay (looks better than scanline shader in a crt in my opinion)
one line tripping over the other, looks allright but a little bit messy
zoomed out version of the first picture
Nah. Looks fine to me. It’s a game based on a comic book and the colors shouldn’t be as dull as those in your corrected shot.
There are so many conflicting data points when it comes to this subject that it’s impossible to determine a “correct” color temp for these games. Ultimately, the operator calibrated the monitor and did any number of different things with color temp, but it’s safe to say that the majority of arcade monitors were adjusted to a warm temp that was around 6500k regardless of what was intended by the game developer. I played around with color mangling a bit and a cooler color temp just looks flat out wrong in many cases. Color mangling might make some games look better but I don’t think there’s any universally applicable standard when it comes to this. I don’t think the developers cared much about color and I think this is almost entirely a matter of personal preference. This thread at the Shmups forum might be of interest.
Btw, the scanlines in some of your recent shots are definitely off- they shouldn’t be cutting through pixels like that. I’d recommend either using integer scale or using crt-easymode since it seems to be the best for scanlines at non-integer scales.
I agree that correcting for japanese NTSC 9300K white point makes a lot of sense for home consoles, since the developers probably had that white point in mind (and in testing reference) when designing the games. I’m not so sure how much (or if) that came into play in an arcade setting, where RGB connections and color space were expected. I guess the manuals that came with the games may be a place to check for any calibration information and/or white point values.
@Nesguy because the game is based on a comic book you want it to look yellow? Interesting logic. The corrected colors are not dull, they are balanced. Regarding the scanlines, it’s easymode as usual. For months I have been saying that it’s my favourite shader due to its ability to deal with non integer (among other reasons), and now you come to tell me that I should use it. lol
There’s no logic when it comes to this subject, because no universal standards existed for game developers in the 80s and 90s the way there are universal standards for TV, movies and modern games. This is almost entirely a matter of personal preference and IMO your corrected colors do look somewhat dull and lifeless. It’s assuming way too much to think that developers even cared that much about this. Retro gaming is not an activity where color accuracy is critical so you should just do whatever looks best to you. There’s also the fact that different people literally perceive colors differently because we don’t all have the exact same distribution of rods/cones in our eyes. Hell, I have a defect where colors look slightly different when viewed with just my left eye vs. just my right eye.
Regarding the scanlines, it’s easymode as usual.
Well, you have scanlines cutting right through the middle of pixels, which can’t possibly be correct, so there’s definitely something off in your settings.
I’m not interested in another debate, though. You do you.
Fiddling a little and breaking my head at the same time for hours, I can finally get a brightness that suits me in all my games and especially in gouls’n ghosts and violent storm! By changing the value of lcd_gamma 2.2 to 1.8 ~ 1.4 (crt-royale). So the problem is either my screen is not a 2.2 or something is wrong with the shader. Any ideas ? 
The other shaders do not cause any problems in 2.2 
At the risk of repeating myself, download and use paint, I know that it is not practical and that the approach can be boring but I can not do otherwise with such resolutions to have an undistorted view of a non-representative image of my screen, the deposit also applies to 4k users! Thank you for reading this long paragraph for the bravest haha 
Hi, I love this screen can you tell me what is your shader chain ? Is it zfast-crt+dotmask and image adjustment or an other chain ? Is your Cadillacs & Dinosaurs screen the same chain shader ?
This settings are for 1080P or 2160P
Thanks and sorry for my bad English
@Nesguy Exactly, a matter of personal preference: you prefer the yellow cast and emulated-on-lcd tones and I prefer the cooler crt-like tones. However, considering that lcds and emulation basically didn’t exist when those games were originally being developed and released, it’s quite safe to assume that their intended look was closer to my preference. So yeah, there’s some logic to it after all. And color accuracy is not critical in retro gaming? But brightness is? Wtf man, I don’t mean to offend but you are talking nonsense and contradicting yourself.
Dull and lifeless, eh? Wrong. What they look is very similar to the pcb + crt combo.
Default fba output
Corrected
pcb on crt from this little video that I just found
It’s a shame that I couldn’t find decent crt footage from stage 2, the jungle. The differences there are staggering, because green.
And non-integer scanlines can never be perfect. It’s a compromise I must make in order to get a vertically stretched image @720p.
That background still looks pretty lavender, and there’s more red in the floor tiles vs the capture, but if you go any cooler with your settings, you’ll probably have issues with the white being too blue…
As I’ve mentioned before, I think photographic captures of CRTs might have something else going on that makes them cooler than IRL, but OTOH there’s no reason for Capcom to make that background purple…
Yup, my floor is a bit more red since the preset is actually warmer than the capture, which is indeed a bit too cold, most likely due to camera settings. Now that you are here, hunter, and given that you own an XM29, I would love to see what Cadillacs and Dinosaurs’ early stage 2 looks like on it. A (camera) white balance of 6500k would be adequate as reference, especially considering that it is a high end crt and its color levels won’t be all over the place. If that appears too blue still you can increase the temperature until the image more or less matches what your eyes can see.
Sure, I’ll try to do some testing with it this weekend.
Just for fun, I tried to match the C&D capture:
The resulting LUT is awful lol
Awful indeed, but the one you chose is not good. Why didn’t you pick the last one I posted?
