Regarding color mods

[jacobgong]

Those "realistic" or "Beautiful" custom settings for the FXAA injector thing, or the custom palette thing with the enhanced shader mod.

 

Do you seriously think, that the makers of this game forgot to color correct their game before release? Or do you think they don't have a color managed workflow for texture painters?

Or maybe you think those concept artists don't know what they are doing, but you know exactly what you are doing?

 

There is a easy way to test for the answer of course, I just take some screenshots from the game, open in Photoshop and click auto color. The result is that for most situations there is absolutely no change what so ever, this is how I know that Skyrim is almost always color corrected to the best of what computers can do. Which is a very easy process, especially for a native HDR rendered game, and is a loose-less process.

 

But, any "post process" is lossy processing, because the engine only outputs a 24-bit image, it doesn't output in HDR. And we have already said that there is no point in doing it anyway because the game already does it internally, it has to be there for HDR renderings. The conclusion is quite simply, unless you have some kind of unknown to man color-correcting artificial intelligence, it can almost only decrease image quality. In fact I don't think either of these two mods actually does real dynamic color correction, the palette thing only applies fixed colors to any scene of the same brightness, and the FXAA injector I think does the same thing only less sophisticated. And how can fixed color palette work in a game? What if I want different color palette in different locations? Now they'll just have the same color?

 

So why are these mods so popular? And why do people keep making them? Well take a look at this, the Loudness War. It's because the untrained eye likes to pick on the image with more contrast and more color, it's exactly what most cheap TN monitors do with their image "enhancement" filters. But of course, same as post processing, you cannot create what's not in the image.

 

No, it's not an issue with crappy ports, because the HDTV uses the same color standard as computer monitors, it's called sRGB. Although it is true almost all cheap TN monitors today are over saturated in I think red and green, and they come with filters as mentioned above which destroys the standard 2.2 gamma and everything. But if the game was corrected for those (it shouldn't but suppose it is), all we really need is just a simply static color correction for everything, not some fancy color palette crap.

[LadyAubrie]

If it makes my gaming experience prettier and more pleasant for me, I'll use it. :)

[JimboUK]

Very few games these days have realistic lighting, they either put bloom and HDR on with a shovel and blind the player or desaturate the thing so it's barely in colour any more. Even worse is when they slap coloured filters over everything, Fallout 3s green and NVs orange are great examples. Look at the world around you, it's in colour. There are some areas in Skyrim where everything is in black and white, no weather conditions completely remove the colour from everything. Very subtle use of the FXAA injector can give excellent results, over use looks horrible. Look at the top image, the entire thing past Lydia is completely devoid of colour, the lower one just adds a little so it doesn't look like I'm playing on a black and white TV.

 

http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/6606/subd.jpg

[Valamyr]

I'm mad someone dares question the Holy Works of Bethesda. There can't POSSIBLY be any improvement upon perfection! :wallbash:

 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. :facepalm:

[jacobgong]

If it makes my gaming experience prettier and more pleasant for me, I'll use it. :)

Well realistically speaking, snow is just white, it's not blue. You're making it less realistic by making it blue. so unless you screen isn't adjusted properly and biased to yellow, the top one is definitely better.

and what makes you think having color is always better than not having color? Does that make all black and white photos inferior to all color photos?

also, since post processing doesn't know what you are seeing, only how bright is the scene, the same effect will be applied when you look at other things of the same brightness.

 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

First of all, Yes a game like Skyrim is very close to perfection in many aspects, including color toning, especially color toning. It may blow in the new interface, which is only because they don't give a s*** about PC.

And secondly, what makes you think you can improve upon it? just because it's not perfect doesn't mean you can do better, you can still make it worse.

Thirdly, show me a MOD that actually improves image quality, rather than decreasing image quality by increasing too much contrast and saturation.

Edited November 22, 2011 by jacobgong

[JimboUK]

How is the top one better? there is no colour at all past the woman in the foreground. Snow doesn't remove colour from the world, the top image isn't remotely realistic. The FXAA thing is far from perfect but it's the best we've got until we can get our hands on the CK and can adjust individual world spaces. Anyway individuals are best placed to judge what works for them, we all see colours differently.

[saldu]

How is the top one better? there is no colour at all past the woman in the foreground. Snow doesn't remove colour from the world, the top image isn't remotely realistic. The FXAA thing is far from perfect but it's the best we've got until we can get our hands on the CK and can adjust individual world spaces. Anyway individuals are best placed to judge what works for them, we all see colours differently.

 

The thing is...let's assume for now that the upper picture needs more color. The problem with the post processing injector is that you can't say "give more color to verything but the snow and rocks". It will always be "give more color to everything including the snow and every rock". It will always manipulate the whole screen.

 

And now to commenting the pictures: I do think the top one looks better by far. The bottom one looks as if my monitor wasn't configured correctly, especially the stony mountain areas in the background look horrible, and also became somewhat blurry.

[JimboUK]

How is the top one better? there is no colour at all past the woman in the foreground. Snow doesn't remove colour from the world, the top image isn't remotely realistic. The FXAA thing is far from perfect but it's the best we've got until we can get our hands on the CK and can adjust individual world spaces. Anyway individuals are best placed to judge what works for them, we all see colours differently.

 

The thing is...let's assume for now that the upper picture needs more color. The problem with the post processing injector is that you can't say "give more color to verything but the snow and rocks". It will always be "give more color to everything including the snow and every rock". It will always manipulate the whole screen.

 

And now to commenting the pictures: I do think the top one looks better by far. The bottom one looks as if my monitor wasn't configured correctly, especially the stony mountain areas in the background look horrible, and also became somewhat blurry.

 

I'm aware of the limitations, however in the lower picture the guy in the background is the correct colour as are the trees, the top image is monochrome, next time it snows go and look outside, the world doesn't become devoid of colour. The FXAA thing isn't correct but neither is the default, it's a case of choosing what you prefer until we get hold of the CK, only then can we think about correcting the lighting in both the exteriors and interiors.

[jacobgong]

I love the 3 easy steps of arguing against a correct position:

1. Pretend you didn't see the OP's post and just refute his title and claim your opinion is the only correct opinion.

2. Grab any faulty evidence to back up your point

3. When that has been refuted, ignore the refutation and insist that everything is Just a matter of opinion.

 

The next step, will of course be I refute your claim that this is in fact a matter of opinion, and you stop replying out of shame. so let's begin.

in the lower picture the guy in the background is the correct colour as are the trees

May I ask you, what is the correct color? I can even see the guy in the background, I can't even see what he's wearing. Why don't you tell me what he's wearing, I pull out its texture, and we can compare which image is in fact the correct color? All I can say now is that I don't remember no blue armor.

And then you said that the trees are the correct color on the lower image, But the trunks of the trees on the bottom image is dark blue, and I don't think any type of tree has a blue trunk, so that can't be more correct either.

the top image is monochrome

Well then why don't we take a look at the saturation map of your two images?

http://i.imgur.com/T6VAe.jpg

Here it is, cyan is least saturated and red is most saturated. One thing you're right on, yes the lower image is more saturated overall, but there is a serious problem. Where is your FXAA thing saturating that image? It's saturating the snow on the ground, and the snow on top of trees. Take a look at the actual tree leaves and the characters, very little change. So it's not actually doing what you said it does, which is make characters more realistic. Instead, it's mostly making snow less realistic by coloring them blue. And if you look at the blue and green channel, and can also be seen a bit here, the effect introduces a vertical line artifact into your image.

So even if it did make the characters a bit more realistic, which I already refuted earlier, but even if it did. It still made a lot more mess by over saturating snow with blue. Therefore the upper image is better looking.

Edited November 22, 2011 by jacobgong

[Aikospacerogue]

Someone needs a lesson in color theory.

 

 

Anyway, I'm using that mod with some other modifications and I'm very happy with it.