Remove the Grayed out Look | ReShade preset

[geøstigma]

Personally, I feel like this game has washed out, weak colors.
For instance, Nero's coat is more grayish than blue. Dante's is also not as bleeding crimson as it used to be. The red orbs red clusters are not really that true red color and flames appear as if thou they would not burn if I were to touch them.

The worst part is that while inside of the Qliphoth, everything is more on the pink rather than on the red side and I think that this is due to the entire screen being "wrapped" with a grey-ish lens of desaturation.

The existing presets were a little bit too oversaturated, oversharpened or simply off for my taste so I I've played with it for a while and tweaked it in an attempt to remove the grayed out look without overdoing anything and this is how it turned out.

Comparison shots[imgur.com]

Personally, I'm very happy with it and find it weird that Capcom would not do something like this themselves.

I wanna share this minimalistic preset here[1drv.ms] so that anyone can use it if they feel the same way.

Also, if you wanna use it, keep in mind that I haven't played the entire game with it yet, just a couple of initial levels with Nero and level 10 with Dante.
It should not have any performance impact whatsoever (except for a couple of seconds longer initial load time) but it is generally good idea to stay away from ReShade if you're having problems with games performance.

Edit: It just hit me. Those of you that would rather not download and use any random files from random strangers online, you can copy and paste this[pastebin.com] into a pre-made preset. It will work for as long as you rename it to "gg".

[Peelsepuuppi]

I just learned how to make custom LUT's for Reshade the first time I tried it. Can't stand most of the presets.

Some of your shots do really look better IMO, but some, especially images with a lot of reds are still oversaturated. Also lightsources are too bright. Are you using bloom? I thought that does affect performance a bit. But good stuff for anyone who just wants to use presets. I'm sure this will be appreciated over the usual atrociously overblown contrastt + oversaturation.

[ShakeNBakeUK]

well, ur shots look WAY better than the washed-out colours in the base game.

no idea why they decided to make the game like this.
colours in DmC were WAY more vibrant.

[rycyyn]

Nice work. Who knows what their motivation for the more washed out look was, but I'm sure people will appreciate your work.

[Peelsepuuppi]

Originally posted by rycyyn:

Nice work. Who knows what their motivation for the more washed out look was, but I'm sure people will appreciate your work.

Most multiplatform games have a washed out look.

[DarkJuda On Deck]

Originally posted by rycyyn:

Nice work. Who knows what their motivation for the more washed out look was, but I'm sure people will appreciate your work.

If some colors seems greyed out, it's intended. Color saturation means something.
I like vivid colors indeed, but natural vivid colors. I don't like oversaturated colors.
If you crank every color up to the point you can't notice the difference between two reds or two blues because all colors are burnt out / blocked and you lost all the nuances, what's the point?

I can basically do the same by toying with my TV's color saturation setting.

I'm not attacking OP's point of view or yours, I'm just saying that colors are like they are for a reason, and if you saturate colors like that you loose nuances between "mid-blues" and "high-blues" as they become the same blue.

Now, OP's shots are weirdly greyed out. My colors ingame are much more vivid yet I didn't change my color saturation or used reshade.

[Slayer Seraph]

Please try this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1688906633
https://youtu.be/_tk9xnY6YBI
It's an HDR easy work around. I know it's not a reshader.
It works very well for HDR, but I heard this issue is on SDR too.

I also use 225 red/blue brightness (exact middle) and 1300 Luminance.

[geøstigma]

Originally posted by ToveriJuri:

I just learned how to make custom LUT's for Reshade the first time I tried it. Can't stand most of the presets.

Some of your shots do really look better IMO, but some, especially images with a lot of reds are still oversaturated. Also lightsources are too bright. Are you using bloom? I thought that does affect performance a bit. But good stuff for anyone who just wants to use presets. I'm sure this will be appreciated over the usual atrociously overblown contrastt + oversaturation.

Red is a bit stronger. My main problem with the game was that red wasn't as strong as I like it. It's notable on the Red Orb icon. The cool thing is that whether you use someone elses or inject your own effects, you can fine tune it for the best experience. And yeah I have used some bloom as well, you can tell if if you compare the 2 shots of V in the van.

Originally posted by DarkJuda:

If some colors seems greyed out, it's intended. Color saturation means something.
I like vivid colors indeed, but natural vivid colors. I don't like oversaturated colors.
If you crank every color up to the point you can't notice the difference between two reds or two blues because all colors are burnt out / blocked and you lost all the nuances, what's the point?

I can basically do the same by toying with my TV's color saturation setting.

I'm not attacking OP's point of view or yours, I'm just saying that colors are like they are for a reason, and if you saturate colors like that you loose nuances between "mid-blues" and "high-blues" as they become the same blue.

Now, OP's shots are weirdly greyed out. My colors ingame are much more vivid yet I didn't change my color saturation or used reshade.

Yeah, I used my TV's HDR Preset as well but I wanted to have some color on my screenshots as well since TV preset affects only what I see, not how the screenshot turns out.

Also I agree with you with the oversaturation, but I don't know why most of the modern games look washed out. Is it my monitor or my settings? However I honestly doubt that as I use "Digital Vibrance" option of Nvidia control panel to make everything a bit more colorful.

Also, I'm pretty sure that DMC 5 wasehd out look is not intended but a bug of some sorts on some users systems like mine because, when I run the game for the first time, the CAPCOM logo is not looking as it should, it's definitely desaturated. I'll try to get a SS of it so you can see but luckily, the following fixes it.

Edit: Tell me this[i.imgur.com] isn't looking off to you as well. It's how it looks on my end when I run the game and I've played it on my PC, Laptop and Streamed to HDR TV. Meanwhile, Capcom logo from a quick Google search looks like this[imgur.com].

Originally posted by Ransom Seraph:

Please try this:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1688906633
https://youtu.be/_tk9xnY6YBI
It's an HDR easy work around. I know it's not a reshader.
It works very well for HDR, but I heard this issue is on SDR too.

I also use 225 red/blue brightness (exact middle) and 1300 Luminance.

Yeah, I also use this as well. With reshade or without it, the first thing I do is what you shown in the video, however, instead of the framerate, I quickly swap from fullscreen to borderless and back. It seems to bring the "original look back".

[CatPerson]

Maybe dev's are creating/programming on monitors that are better/differently calibrated than the ones some players use. So they don't notice anything being "wrong" or off when developing.

All your shots in the original starting post look to me, on my monitors+TV, like you have gamma/brightness way too high, and I'm one of those who doesn't like the colors you changed to. I've never had the logo or start screen being dull either. BUT, of course that's on my monitors.

Like this is what it's like for me (same early Nero spot you used):
https://ffxv.crimsonkeep.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DMC5-00003a.jpg
(that is a link to my own webserver, too lazy to upload/duplicate to imgur, click or not)

I'm sure some will think the darks are too dark, but *I* think it looks good while playing, on my stuff, so personal taste+monitors and all that. I'm sure some will love your presets and find them useful, even if I don't, so it's always nice when people share/present options.

That said, what I've noticed in this game/what happens to me, is that viewing angle/position vs. whatever lighting effects are going on can have a large effect - there are definitely times/spots where color does become more washed out. Like in this one, because of all the "neon" and lights it creates more overall color/blacks desaturation and haziness, but when I was facing camera in a different direction it wasn't as bad.

https://ffxv.crimsonkeep.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DMC5-00010a.jpg
Or in this one it's even worse:
https://ffxv.crimsonkeep.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DMC5-00005a.jpg

But then there's moments like from the starting area where area lighting effects are fairly minimal so color is more prominent (still not a warm color tone tho):
https://ffxv.crimsonkeep.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DMC5-00002a.jpg

I do agree they go a bit overboard on the greyish-blue or whatever lighting filters but in most cases it hasn't looked like anything technically wrong, just a design choice for a somber mood perhaps. No different than some games going overboard with constant brownish/yellow filters instead. Most people tend to prefer "warmer" colortones overall I think.

That said there could certainly be tech reasons, like HDR bugs or poor directional lighting stuff etc. I don't use HDR or bloom either. Edit: I have tried that trick in the video above, doesn't change anything for me - desaturation haze for me seems largely related to surrounding lighting effects and angle.

[geøstigma]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

All your shots in the original starting post look to me, on my monitors+TV, like you have gamma/brightness way too high

Exactly, and I'm one of those people that keep brightness and gamma on very low, to be exact, my monitor's brightness is set to 20/100.

Originally posted by CatPerson:

Like this is what it's like for me (same early Nero spot you used):
https://ffxv.crimsonkeep.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/DMC5-00003a.jpg


I'm sure some will think the darks are too dark, but *I* think it looks good while playing, on my stuff, so personal taste+monitors and all that. I'm sure some will love your presets and find them useful, even if I don't, so it's always nice when people share/present options.

I also love my dark areas to be really dark (especially in games that have torches, flashlights and exploration) and I absolutely love how it looks on your end. It's similar how it appears for me on my TV when I use HDR preset.

Also, all of your shots look incomparably better to how my game looks by default and even probably with the preset that I've made. I especially love the third shot with bleeding reds in the background. Something is definitely wrong with my game...

[Kyle G]

Weird, I don't have a gray look for my copy.