Please show off what crt shaders can do!

Less Bloom, Less Glow, Full Mask Strength, Mask Gamma, lower Gamma_C.

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That saturation is really overblown IMO, I’d check the shader out in 240p Test Suite to check if everything is in range

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Here’s what Igot so far:

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Is this closer to what you wanted?

Also, when you use things like Bloom, Halation and Glow, they might brighten the image but not in a very realistic and accurate way. Instead try to rely on the “phosphors” themselves to generate all the colour and brightness you need. Things like Gamma_C and Post CRT Brightness tend not to destroy or compete with the Mask like those other settings do.

Trust the process and eventually you’ll get things as bright as you need without over-reliance on the previously mentioned “software tricks”.

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Causes brights to swell in a way that can be undesirable, though. Really every method for brightening the image that doesn’t really on the display itself comes with it’s own unique drawbacks, it’s just a matter of using these things sparingly and finding a compromise that works for you.

My preferred method is using the brightness boosts (causes clipping) and then using the variation in scanline width to distinguish the brighter shades.

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I want something closer to this screenshot, you posted in Mega bezel thread. What preset is it?

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I’ll have to do some research in order to remember exactly which preset this was from but it’s definitely one of my NTSC Slot_Mask presets. Either for Turbo Duo or SNES.

In the meantime, if you want to get closer to this don’t exceed 0.15 for Bloom. Don’t exceed 0.01 for glow. Use full Mask Strength, GSL 2.0. Don’t use Halation. No mask Bloom.

As @Nesguy pointed out, these things if used, should be used very sparingly because they all take the image away from being an accurate representation of how the image looks and is generated on a real CRT.

You can easily load up one of my NTSC presets and see similar settings.

However, if you use HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader version after 1.7.0, they won’t look as intended.

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What changes did you make to the preset anyway? One thing I noticed switching back over to the hd guest shader from the standard is that the standard has more saturation by default it seems, this is just my observations going back and forth between hd and standard while working on my next shader pack update.

I think it’s a known fact around here now that I spike up settings like contrast, glow, bloom, post brightness in my presets, hell I probably have the “brightest” looking presets on the whole shader forum the way I crank those settings up. One thing I can’t do is play games with a dim looking shader, that makes me not what to even play the game anymore plus I don’t game on a hdr tv just a standard 4k display so I use the settings in the shader to brighten up the image until I’m satisfied. I don’t care about things like clipping because I never was going for anything “accurate”, just something that satisfies my eyes.

In any case my current shader pack is already obsolete to me, what I’m working on now will bring a few changes to the table namely me switching back over to the hd guest shader and I gave my 2-phase presets a new make over, current ones I can say are more saturated than they need to be so look forward to that switch up.

Ok back to working on my update lol

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“I don’t care what you have to do, just make the image bright, damn it!” -Sonkun, probably :smile:

You don’t necessarily need HDR to have a bright image, an SDR display with the backlight maxed out provides plenty of headroom for scanlines and masks (albeit not full strength masks) without maxing the brightness effects. Cranking up all the brightness effects is just one way to achieve a bright image but can cause color inaccuracies and other artifacts that are unpleasant to some. Halation is the worst offender in this regard, even the lowest setting in guest-advanced hurts my eyes and makes me squint. I also personally don’t like how mask detail in highlights gets blurred with a lot of bloom. I need my mask texture in highlights or something just seems “off.” It’s good to have options for everyone, though!

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Pretty much lol.

That’s a nope. Not wasting time going back and forth on my tv to change backlight settings just to have more “accuracy” because once again that’s not my aim.

Me and you already been down this road before many moons ago so I’ll keep things simple, if someone likes my presets, use them, if not they have all the time in the world to make a preset the way they like it.

I think I’m doing something right though, I get way more praises on my presets than I get negative comments, a youtuber making 3 whole videos just about my presets etc. So I’m good with my presets.

Now it’s back to work lol

Your reply came off as a bit defensive and a bit “I’m the best.” Not trying to attack you, man. I’ve received compliments as well, from people who’s opinions carry a lot more weight, IMO, than some rando on YouTube. If you want to fight we can but I’d honestly rather not. It just seems like you’re real quick to go down that road whenever the mood strikes you.

Edit: all TVs have multiple preset profiles that you can edit. I have one “custom” profile for shaders and one profile for watching shows and movies, flipping back and forth requires pressing the “mode” button on my remote a couple times. Is this really a hurdle?

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It’s not that serious, no we’re not “fighting” so get your mind off that, I got better things to do. I see comments up above talking to the other guy posting pics of my presets talking about bloom etc and I use a lot of all of that so it relates to my work and my presets so I came to put my two cents in.

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We’re all just here to have fun, right? Your settings make a lot of people happy, and that’s great.

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True indeed. It gets a little messy in the “lab” though, tweaking I mean. Especially when gutting shader passes from other shaders to add into guest’s shader to get certain results but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t having fun doing it and experimenting.

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So you’ll spend hours tweaking shader settings but adjusting the backlight on a TV is too much? Makes a lot of sense :grin:

It’s all good man.

Just for fun, I think it breaks down like this:

“artistic” <———> “realistic”

Sonkun — Cyber — Me — Megatron

Not better or worse, just different tastes.

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Funny when you look at it that way right lol? But the whole point of the tweaking is so that when I’m done it will be good enough to just “set it and forget it”, which has also always been the aim of my presets. When people use my presets the only thing I want them to do is load the preset up and get right to gaming that’s it. I put the work in so users can just get right to playing their games.

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Makes sense. It’s difficult to have a “one size fits all” preset due to vastly different displays with varying brightness levels, color profiles, etc- so the goal is one size fits all, but it’s an elusive one. That’s the idea behind the black and white mask presets I’m currently working on, but even those are going to require a bit of tweaking by the user to get the best experience.

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The struggle continues man, I think it’s a never ending battle dealing with shaders in general.

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Guest-advanced-fast. Fast because it runs full speed on my laptop battery :wink: Definitely looks better than anything else

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Black and white aperture grille mask at 1080p vs consumer-grade Trinitron. As you can see, the horizontal granularity is almost a perfect match!

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