This is just a color correction Reshade preset. It requires the Vignette Remover mod to be installed as well as the Reshade program itself to be installed. Mass Effect 1, 2, & 3 are all "Direct3D 9," so select that option when prompted by the Reshade installer. Make sure you select YES when the Reshade installer asks you if you want to download the collection of standard effects from GitHub, but leave ONLY the ones you need or want to experiment with checked on the next prompt menu.
If you leave ALL of the downloadable shaders "checked" during the Reshade installation process, they will ALL be installed and activated, and the game could take MUCH longer to load, so you are better off only installing the effects you need to use, or the ones you want to experiment with. You then will have to copy this mod's INI file into the "...Mass Effect\Binaries" folder, fire up the game, and press the "Home" key to launch the Reshade overlay.
Despite what the author says in the description, you really only need Technicolor2, and ColorMatrix active to get the colors to resemble the original game settings (Vibrance is up to you, I leave it off). The other shaders he listed are either redundant/overwhelming (FakeHDR), affect things other than colour/look terrible (Clarity, FineSharp) and have deleterious effects on performance (SMAA), or don't have any perceptible impact on the visuals (Levels, Curves).
If you want, you can use a console command to remove all post-processing effects and then use the Reshade shaders to correct the color yourself, as opposed to installing the Vignette Remover and Color Correction mods. The instructions for this process are below.
See the following page for instructions on Enabling the In-Game Console. This is useful for so many things, and anyone who wants more control of Mass Effect's game engine should learn the console and the commands.
Inside the game, once you have activated the console using the hotkey that you specified (see the link above), using the command "Show Postprocess" will toggle all post-process effects off : Vignette, Bloom, Film Grain, Motion Blur, Depth Of Field. They CANNOT be toggled individually, even though related console commands would seem to suggest that users SHOULD be able to do so (it is possible the commands are in the game engine somewhere, but no one managed to create a decompiler for ME1 that most people can use, so many commands are probably still unknown by anyone outside of the dev team).
The command "Show Postprocess" can also be bound to a hotkey. For example, let's say you want to bind that command to F12. In the BIOInput.ini file you would add the following line: Bindings=(Name="F12",InputMode=BIO_INPUT_MODE_NONE,Command="Show Postprocess",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Something to keep in mind for Origin users is that if you make changes to the BIOInput.ini file, it may get reverted by Origin's Cloud Save functions the next time you launch the game. You should make the BIOInput file read-only, or disable Origin's Cloud Save functionality. Not sure if this is also the case for Steam (why would you play ME1 or 2 on Steam though? You can't even get all the DLC!)
See the following page for more information on using the configuration file to customize Keybindings.
***When you are adding your own hotkeys in, be sure that the key you put in Bindings=(Name="__"... is not listed elsewhere in the file as it can create conflicts. Multiple functions can be, and are, mapped to single buttons, as can be see seen elsewhere in the file. In those cases, the "vertical pipe" character: | is used to separate multiple strings. However, you can create conflicts in this way, so use caution and make sure to back up your original BIOInput.ini file before you start making your own changes.
As I mentioned, each of the post-process effects are supposed to be individually toggle-able (i.e. using "Show Vignette" in the console, or "Show Bloom") but I cannot get these commands to work.
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If you leave ALL of the downloadable shaders "checked" during the Reshade installation process, they will ALL be installed and activated, and the game could take MUCH longer to load, so you are better off only installing the effects you need to use, or the ones you want to experiment with. You then will have to copy this mod's INI file into the "...Mass Effect\Binaries" folder, fire up the game, and press the "Home" key to launch the Reshade overlay.
Despite what the author says in the description, you really only need Technicolor2, and ColorMatrix active to get the colors to resemble the original game settings (Vibrance is up to you, I leave it off). The other shaders he listed are either redundant/overwhelming (FakeHDR), affect things other than colour/look terrible (Clarity, FineSharp) and have deleterious effects on performance (SMAA), or don't have any perceptible impact on the visuals (Levels, Curves).
If you want, you can use a console command to remove all post-processing effects and then use the Reshade shaders to correct the color yourself, as opposed to installing the Vignette Remover and Color Correction mods. The instructions for this process are below.
See the following page for instructions on Enabling the In-Game Console. This is useful for so many things, and anyone who wants more control of Mass Effect's game engine should learn the console and the commands.
Inside the game, once you have activated the console using the hotkey that you specified (see the link above), using the command "Show Postprocess" will toggle all post-process effects off : Vignette, Bloom, Film Grain, Motion Blur, Depth Of Field. They CANNOT be toggled individually, even though related console commands would seem to suggest that users SHOULD be able to do so (it is possible the commands are in the game engine somewhere, but no one managed to create a decompiler for ME1 that most people can use, so many commands are probably still unknown by anyone outside of the dev team).
The command "Show Postprocess" can also be bound to a hotkey. For example, let's say you want to bind that command to F12. In the BIOInput.ini file you would add the following line:
Bindings=(Name="F12",InputMode=BIO_INPUT_MODE_NONE,Command="Show Postprocess",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False)
Something to keep in mind for Origin users is that if you make changes to the BIOInput.ini file, it may get reverted by Origin's Cloud Save functions the next time you launch the game. You should make the BIOInput file read-only, or disable Origin's Cloud Save functionality. Not sure if this is also the case for Steam (why would you play ME1 or 2 on Steam though? You can't even get all the DLC!)
See the following page for more information on using the configuration file to customize Keybindings.
***When you are adding your own hotkeys in, be sure that the key you put in Bindings=(Name="__"... is not listed elsewhere in the file as it can create conflicts. Multiple functions can be, and are, mapped to single buttons, as can be see seen elsewhere in the file. In those cases, the "vertical pipe" character: | is used to separate multiple strings. However, you can create conflicts in this way, so use caution and make sure to back up your original BIOInput.ini file before you start making your own changes.
As I mentioned, each of the post-process effects are supposed to be individually toggle-able (i.e. using "Show Vignette" in the console, or "Show Bloom") but I cannot get these commands to work.