The Witcher 3

File information

Last updated

Original upload

Created by

sgascon

Uploaded by

sgascon

Virus scan

Safe to use

Tags for this mod

About this mod

This Reshade is meant to boost the excellent Phoenix Lighting Mod by adding sharpness to the image, a bit of depth with shadows, and slight de-saturation for a more realistic look while allowing to play the game beginning to end.

Requirements
Permissions and credits
Changelogs
I love the work done by mishikedman on his Phoenix Lighting mod. Iteration 4 was impressive, but 5th is even better.

There are, though, some improvements to the final image that can only be achieved with a Reshade.

I've been trying countless Reshades from different authors, and even I appreciate and admire the work and love poured into these, all are too extreme from my point of view. They usually change the mood and overall feel of an already excellent game and mod, and majority don't work at nighttime, dark environments and glitch on counter-light situations (SSAO artifacts pop-up). Others are just meant for screenshots.

This Reshade is meant to improve the final image quality of the game while still being 100% playable in all situations. This is achieved with a combination of subtle, yet effective, techniques:
  • Increase the sharpness and definition of objects on screen with AdaptiveSharpen
  • Desaturate slightly the image to obtain a more realistic color output with Colourfulness
  • Create more depth on objects and characters to help reading the image better with MXAO - a screen space ambient occlusion technique - info here

Installation is pretty straight forward:
  • Download manually the "Realistic Quality Booster" reshade config file from "Files"
  • Download the latest version of Reshade here
  • Install Reshade following the steps (Direct3d 10+ and all shaders)
  • Once Reshade is installed, copy the file inside the zip to your executable folder
    Usually "..\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\The Witcher 3\bin\x64"
  • Once the game starts, open your Reshade menu
    Usually "home" button
  • Check that the prefab is selected "RealisticQualityBooster_Phoenix5_v1"
    if not, select it from the list or pressing the left/right arrows
  • Close the preshade menu (with "home" button) and have fun!

You should not have any impact on performance - or pretty low one - 100% tied to your machine specs. Remember to check the box "Performance Mode" in the Reshade in-game menu. Saves you a couple of frames per second.

You can use this Reshade with any lighting mod (or none), but I strongly recommend to use Phoenix Lighting. It's just amazing and mishikedman keeps updating it still today! Big kudos to this talented modder.

Note this preset was meant for personal use, but after sharing it with some friends, and telling me they "love it", I thought someone out there might enjoy it, too.

Besides Phoenix, these are other highly recommended mods to make your Witcher3 look and play "current gen":

All credits for all these mods go to their respective authors - they are doing an absolutely amazing job!

I'm having a blast replaying the game with all these improvements and this reshade.

Hope you enjoy it too!