FIRNIS 1.96 - IMAGE AND LIGHT ENHANCING
Varnish for your graphics.

Made with love, autism and too much free time. Aged like wine.

FIRNIS is a universal ReShade Preset that functions as the last layer ("fear-niz" is german for that special varnish you use to finish paintings) to create a richer image with more details, crisper textures, better bloom/fog and a more realistic emission and flow of light.
It results in an overall cleaner, more detailed and more immersive look.

It is meant to be a respectful ReShade, that is gentle to the image and the eye:
Not a harsh filter that just cranks up contrast and pushes a color over everything else or turns the picture just too dark for most gameplay.
Develop the image, make it shine, not altering the creators vision - give the graphics a finishing touch and obliterate some visual issues. 

And give sharpness in lower resolutions for those who like their little warmachines, even if they are old.

It is build in mind to work as a "one fits all"-solution, working in every situation, for any ENB (or without), with every resolution on any graphical settings. I can't test it above 1440p unfortunately - i would love to see some results.

IF YOU LIKE THIS MOD, PLEASE THINK OF COMING BACK TO ENDORSE

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WHAT IT DOES:

Post-Procession Trickery Magic

- gets rid of The Smudge™
- lifts the image a bit, using a broader dynamic range
- better light emmision 
- better skin
- so much better fur with shell texturing (you will love Fluffworks even more.)
- better structures and texturesm
- more realistic and immersive looking metal reflections

- more details and visibility in low light situations and blacked out shadows, shows great in dark situations
- particle effects are more crisp and finer, feels more lightweight
- faked bounce light / spill light (a similar visual effect to "raytracing")
- slightly sharper
- stuff looks more three-dimensional

- eyefriendlier. I get less migraine while playing, i guess because my eyes don't try to adapt to that fake foggy bloomy
  light situation with too dark shadows and no spill.

- overall a more developed look
- more immersive
- it's like getting glasses



TL;DR:

It is a neat little ReShade preset.
Look at the screenshots and try it out - it makes the image shiny :3c

idk it originated intuitively from my rubbish and autodidactic film/photography workflow while always playing on brave little 'tatos, so here we are.










For a bit more 'modern feeling' a weak Depth of Field, suited for gameplay is integrated - for the case your ENBs DoF is too performance heavy, too strong or you don't like the aesthetic of ENB's DoF in general. Also pretty nice for screen archery.

It also works good (additional to an ENB's DoF) for having a better, closer bokeh around your character for screenshots.

You can activate it by pressing [Num -]. Of course, you can alter or delete the keybinding if it interferes with your setup, when you right-click on "MatsoDOF [DOF.fx]". -> To delete a keybind, press backspace when asked for a key.



As always: you must try by yourself and look if it suites you.

(Try it out and turn it on and off with a hotkey - you will notice!)












INSTALLATION
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If that's your first time installing ReShade, don't worry - it might be much text, but it is super easy:



1.1) Install the latest ReShade with the Installer from https://reshade.me/ by selecting your main .exe in your installation folder.

Select Direct X10/11/12, click 'next', when asking for a preset click 'next', and then it will ask which effect packages to install.


1.2) Click "Uncheck all", and again "check all". You want to install all the shader packages. (So you won't have to worry on any preset in the future.)

Click "next". It will download all the effects and tell you when all is installed.


2) Drop the .ini-file you downloaded into your main Skyrim folder.


3) Open Reshade's menu overlay ingame with [Pos1], read the quick tutorial if you are new and then select "FIRNIS 1.96 - Image and Light Enhancing". Make sure to be in performance mode.



It should look like this:




Go into ReShade's Settings Tab and asign an "Effect Toggle" key to quick turn my ReShade on and off to see the difference the reshade makes.
I usually use [Num del], as it comes handy near the mouse.

Assign a screenshot hotkey and a screenshot folder. I use [F2] and usually create a "screenshot"-folder in the main folder.
You can switch the file format from png to jpg. I recommend doing that, because png-files are pretty huge, especially in higher resolutions.
When using jpg, make sure to put quality on 100% if you can spare that Kilobytes. I use Photomode on F4, so it is a pretty nice workflow for screenarchery.


You have to use reshades screenshot function - using the internal screenshot function won't show the enhanced image! 


Done.







IF YOU LIKE MY WORK, PLEASE ENDORSE AND SHARE!

SUPPORT ME ON KO-FI: https://ko-fi.com/ruzzlefuzz
I am a poor and struggling neurodiverse artist/designer, any tips are appreciated.
But please go tip other mod author's first.







ADDITIONAL TWEAKS / FINE TUNING:
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a) More sharpening for your resolution and particular ENB, or when it looks oversharpened:
Adapt the sharpening intenisty of [CAS.fx] to your own liking.

Standard is at 0.75, but it really depends on your ENB and resolution - but you can get a very sharp image with this.

Please consider deactivating your ENBs sharpening under ENBEFFECTPOSTPASS.fx in the shader window of ENB's settings.
You don't have to with any ENB, but some ENBs are very sharp and it helps visuals to only have one sharpener at a time.

You can change paremeters when not being in performance mode, and type in numbers by clicking on it while holding Ctrl.



b) Some weather mods, like Obsidian Weathers, let you dim the sunlight a bit.
This is recommended when you use Firnis, it just makes a better, more distinct image when you have details in the highlights imho.



c) There is an optional MXAO Shader (depth shadows) configured you can try to use.
Just click and activate it. The shadows are not really realistic, but it might add some depth to dungeons.
Also you can use curves.fx to add (cheap and image crushing) contrast.


You can also try the older files:
The approach was always the same, developing the image bringing more clarity, but the whole color and shadow-pipeline changed over time, as the different shaders pull on each other outputs. Some presets have issues, some may bend more than other (gradients looking blocky, in the sky or in foggy weather) and the process was pretty much try and error what works and crushes image quality. I learned a lot tho. Some are more saturated than others, fire produced false colours till version 1.75 or so. It was an adventure for me as a color grading artist. But visuals are extremly subjective.

So if you are in search for more "pop" in your images of your characters, maybe an older version gives more what you need :3






A (wacky) WAY TO SAVE FPS, just oversharp a low-res image:


When playing on a much lower resolution than your screen's native resolution, you can oversharp CAS.fx (values around 1.5 to 2.5 or even more) and still get a subjective more detailed image to save fps. Oversharpening can have an interesting aesthetic to it, when you find the sweetspot. 

Unedited Screenshots might feel oversharpened viewed in different resolutions later on, but when playing for example in 1600x900 on a 2560x1440 display it can save you a lot of fps, while still having a subjectivly better image than before.

When not taking screenshots in full resolution, i usually play in 1600x900, to have a way smoother combat and give the gpu some headroom.
I also do like the look of it. On 1280x720, with CAS cranked up to 2.5, it all looks like some old hyperrealistic renderings on a CRT display with a slight 'vhs' filter on it. Hard to describe, but very funky. You might try putting scanlines on it and pretend it is some old footage...

For this trickery to work, you have to turn off any ENB sharpening, otherwise oversharpening really looks terrible.

Playing at 900p, i use a sharpening intensity of 1 with NAT 3.1 ENB.
for 720p i use  1.55, but those values don't fit with any display. This also depends heavily on the ENB. Pi-Cho is pretty sharp while NAT is pretty soft.

As a rule of thumb: When you think "wow, that is  c r i s p !", just a little less (like -0.2) and you should be fine.
The novelty will wear off and your eyes will adapt to it.



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NICE TO KNOW:
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Use SSE ReShade Helper and the game will render the UI elements after/over ReShade's image.
So even if you are using a heavy DoF-Shader the blur won't disturb your menus.
No requirement, but i found this mod the last weeks and so i endorse it. 

Comes very handy with Photomode, not disturbing the UI.




You should also consider calibrating the contrast/brightness of your monitor/tv!


Calibrating colour is a very difficult task and unneccessary imho, but calibrating contrast is quick and easy and makes a lot!
When looking at the black to white gradient, make sure you see a difference between the first and the last two fields.
Contrast and Brightness are the settings you have to alter on your display.


If you've done this, your picture will be way better than before and you will see nuances in depths and heights that otherwise would be just clipped out. 
Color, as said, is much more difficult to calibrate and unneccessary, as every color is relatively shifted and due to that harmonic, even if a little bit off. But you don't make prints that have to be accurate... so just stay with the contrast :3








Firnis also works in many other games, especially those that are cursed by TAA. Try it out and leave a tip!
https://ko-fi.com/ruzzlefuzz