Don't let the presentation fool you; I'm not particularly good at this.
These are simply my Personal, Unoptimized, Ramshackle Presets for GShade.



Disclaimer:

I have no idea what I'm doing.
I mess with things until I like what I see, and I'm uploading my presets in case anyone else likes it enough to try it out.
Also, turn off in-game DoF if you're using any of the "HGP" Presets for best results!





The Presets



Nuke UW (GP5)
Urban Wasteland (Gameplay)



Expand Spoiler for Original image comparison


A bleak/bleached film-like Gameplay preset, with a dramatic shift into a colder palette with more fake "ambient" lighting, with DoF autofocus now off, and fixed to only blur distant objects; far enough to not affect gameplay, plus a lil' bit of film grain. Similar performance impact to LWP. Good visibility in dungeons and dark areas.



Nuke LWP (HGP4)
Light-weight Prototype (Hybrid Gameplay)



Expand Spoiler for Original image comparison


An attempt at a performance-friendly Photo/Gameplay preset, aiming for subtle, cooler color changes with some light sharpening. Lower performance impact than both AVBR and ECDP presets, but still a noticeable drop in performance. My most playable preset yet, both for performance and visuals, with a subtle shift in colors and little effect on vanilla contrast. Good visibility in dungeons and dark areas.



Nuke ECDP (HGP3)
Experimental Cinematic DoF Preset (Hybrid Gameplay)



Expand Spoiler for Original image comparison


My first preset made with GShade. Something a bit more... dramatic and film-looking, trying to get a bit of that x-processed look you get from old cameras using the wrong film. Loosely consulted the GShade visual guide for this one, so things should be ordered correctly; I mostly picked and chose and eliminated the effects I liked and didn't like, to try and get a gameplay preset with a playable DoF setting, which has a neat side effect of changing based on zoom amount. I haven't been able to test it in every scenario ever, but I like what I see.



Nuke AVBR (GP2)
Amateur Vibrance Preset (Gameplay)



Expand Spoiler for Original image comparison


Made while I was still using ReShade, designed to be able to be used during Gameplay (though I don't know how well that works for everyone); this was the first preset I ever made (that I was happy with), and therefore, everything is unordered and I just played around with settings until I liked what I ended up with. As the acronym suggests, it's supposed to be vibrant, or at least, I think it is.



Nuke AVBR+ (HGP2)
Amateur Vibrance Preset PLUS (Hybrid Gameplay)



Expand Spoiler for Original image comparison



Same deal as ABVR, but now with added DoF after I upgraded to GShade! Results may vary. The order is still messed up.



Known Issues

The contrast hurts my eyes sometimes
Yeah, that'll happen in scenes with a lot of solid bright colours, happens during fog, in the desert, etc. Some places are just difficult for me to work with, I honestly just toggle the effects off in those areas/weathers sometimes. If anyone knows how to deal with this without changing too much in other scenes and is wiling to leave a comment, go ahead!

The DoF is too strong
I've set the focal point to the very bottom, so whatever ground is near your character will be the focal point. This is a sort of hacky-way to have DoF that doesn't get in the way of gameplay, but I find it works well enough. If you wish, you may completely turn off the DoF by toggling the effect in the settings, or adjusting the far blur parameter in the DoF settings to your liking if you just want a weaker effect. I also play with 3rd Person Camera Angle set to 64, which may also affect the focal point. UI elements might be blown out in some cases, this is not something I can control withotu removing DoF, and Character may also be blurry in character selection due to the lack of a focal point. I haven't tested it in every situation.

AVBR looks...incredibly red
Yep, though I feel it is a nice tradeoff for how the woods start to look when it brings out the autumnal colours. If there is actual strong reds in the scene though, they do indeed become incredibly red. I've gotten used to it, but if you still want to use it and want to reduce the red, adjust the R curve in... I forgot what the effect is called. I'll edit this later. Bear in mind this will affect all scenes.

There's a lot of banding at night...
I haven't found a good solution to that, and I'm not the best at making presets. You could try using "Deband", which works well, but also removes a lot of distant detail, though I'm not sure of the performance impact. Turning off vignette for any presets that have Lightroom may also help.

There's some pixel crawling with sharpening
I don't think this can be fixed, unfortunately, turn off "LumaSharpen" in the presets with it if it really bothers you - it is a tradeoff between aliasing and fidelity, and I felt it was worth it on some of the presets

What does "Hybrid Gameplay" mean?
Means I made it for both gameplay and screenshots, so you can snap while you clap (clap fools, that is)

Do you use any mods in these screenshots?
Just SaikaDarkmoon's Hair Defined and Titan Firm's Tight&Firm, but it wouldn't really matter much whether you did or not; it wouldn't really affect how the GShade looks; I just like the HD hair.

These aren't optimized very well
I know... send help



For the record, I still think the vanilla game is still very beautiful, especially considering what they've managed to do with the engine they have.
GShade offers an... alternative experience, if you catch my drift... not that I was going anywhere with this.

A lot of FFXIV GShade presets I find are really pretty, but a bit extreme for me (not to say these couldn't be considered extreme in their own rights), and add a lot of extra effects on the screen, I couldn't really find something that I was looking for so I decided to try my hand at making a few of my own, and you know what? After messing about, I kinda like what I see, and maybe some others might like them too. While I wouldn't say these are necessarily "realistic", I do try to aim for a convincing, lifelike look.

I have very little experience in this so I'm just playing it by eye; if you know a thing or two about making presets, optimization, and anything else you think I should know, drop a comment cause I'm all ears, these don't perform the best and I'd be happy to shave off any unnecessary FPS hogs while keeping the look as close to what I want if I can. Hell, if you wanted to edit my presets yourself without changing the look, and telling me what you did to make it more performant, I'd be happy to put it up here as well, with credit to you of course.



If you made it this far, thanks for reading, yall. Please endorse if you would like to see more presets added to this page.