#hotsampling faq

[pictureamoebae]

Hey I love ALL your cyberpunk2077 screenshots! Are you playing in 4k? I recently upgraded my monitor to an LG 27GP850 one and I have a rtx 3070 gpu. I also got back into cp2077 and the phantom liberty expansion but when I try and play in 2k, a lot of times the frame rate drops and everything becomes laggy and jittery. When I dial down the resolution to 1920x1080 again, everything runs perfectly smooth. Do you have any tips for me as to what settings I need to have or what I need to change to play in 2k and not have a laggy game? Would reshade help or make it worse? I appreciate your time and answer! Much love xx

Hi anon! I have a 2560x1440 monitor, that’s what I play in. I have all settings maxed out and have dlss on quality. My fps is smooth and consistent, but I recently got a new pc that can handle it.

I hotsample my screenshots. Otis_inf (Frans Bouma) makes camera tools for games, and he made one for Cyberpunk. I use that in addition to the game’s photomode, and among other things it allows you to hotsample.

Hotsampling means you can freely change the size and shape of the game window. So, I can compose a shot in a 1440x1440 window, then when I’m ready to take it I can make the window temporarily even bigger, say to 4500x4500, take the shot, and then make the window smaller again. That results in a high quality screenshot, without having to suffer performance problems from playing at higher resolutions, and with the added bonus that I can change the aspect ratio too.

Otis’ camera tools require subbing to his patreon but imo it’s worth it if you’re likely to want that type of screenshot capability across a few games.

[amanda-plays]

Hey! I'm Amanda | Not WCIF | 18+ (Sometimes NSFW)

Find me on YouTube: Here Main series on YouTube: The Aspiring Artist | Rotational Gameplay All posts related to The Aspiring Artist can be found here. Casual gameplay posts on my blog are separate from the storyline on YouTube. All of my Sims 4 posts | All of my reblogs | Other nsfw posts CAS Mods Cas background | Cas lighting (Studio flat) | Controlled Position Mod | More Cas Columns (6 columns) Game Lighting Mods In-Game Lighting (Dark) | Sunblind Gshade/Reshade I make my own Gshade presets. They are not available for download. However, here are some that I would recommend if you are looking for a preset: Boho dreams (Neecxle) | Birdie (Sforzinda) | Lithium (Gunthermunch) | Luminescent (HazelMine) | Raices (Folkbreeze) | Almond (Glimersims) | Kaleidoscope (Okruee) | White Willow (Tianaberrie) | Serenity (Misslollypopsims) | Neapolitan (Midsummermoon) Photo Resources I use SRWE for a lot of my screenshots. I take some of them on a higher resolution monitor without hotsampling. I use Krita for photo editing and sometimes Canva. I usually crop my photos and resize them for faster uploading. Check out this tutorial if you're new to hotsampling. Check out this FAQ for help with understanding reshade. Video Resources I use OBS to record my videos and Filmora to edit. I also recommend Davinci for a free editing alternative. I use this mic for narrated episodes. Essential Gameplay Mods These are the mods that I consider essential for my game: Basemental Drugs (21+) | Wicked Whims (18+) | MCCC Other Mods The other mods I have installed: UI Cheats Extension | RPO (I only use modules 1, 7, and 14) | Somnik and Severinka Custom Foods | Control Any Sim | No Zzz | No Music Notes | Hidden Highlight | Tool | No Romantic Satisfaction Decay | Seasons Tuner | Kiss and Grind | Chalk'd UI Defaults/Overrides My current default skin can be found here , default eyes here, default feet here, and default teeth here. I mostly use these skintones. Default phone | Toothbrush | Headphones | Male animation replacer (18+) Some Commonly Used CC I use a lot of eyes from these creators found here and here. I typically use skins, skin details, and other genetics from these creators found here, here, and here.

[pictureamoebae]

hi! what size do you set your bg3 pictures to, to look good on tumblr? i feel like tumblr destroys my quality a bit.. and also when hotsampling, what resolution do you hatsample to? thank you!

Hi anon!

I hotsample to whatever my PC can handle, which admittedly isn't particularly huge at the moment (I'm still putting off ordering my new PC, it will happen this month, I promise!).

For uploading to tumblr I resize to whatever fits on my monitor. So for a landscape orientation it'll be maximum 2560px across, and for a portrait orientation it'll be a maximum of 1440px tall. I think I fudge those numbers a bit for square shots, I can't remember off the top of my head, I think I go for 1920px for those, I can't remember why.

There used to be posts knocking around with dimensions for tumblr picture sets, but I always ignored those because they were ridiculously small and meant you could never see a picture at a decent size when clicking on it to enlarge in the lightbox. I never encountered any problems by ignoring it.

[pictureamoebae]

hiii! hope you're doing well today! I had a quick question about hot sampling while taking screenshots in bg3 with reshade. for some reason, no matter what resolution i set it at, when i go to take the screenshot with my usual reshade screenshot key, it just sets it back to the resolution of my monitor. i don't know if maybe i'm just dumb and missing something or doing something wrong but i cannot figure it out. pls help :'(

Hi anon! Are you playing the game in windowed mode? If not, make sure you do. The resolution stuff won't work otherwise.

Also double check if it's possible to set hotkeys for resolution in the BG3 tools. I can't remember if it is or not. If it is, it might be that you've got the same key set for that and for your screenshots. That's an easy fix, just change the key for one of them!

[pictureamoebae]

Hi! Maybe this is a really stupid question idk. But do you have like, any tips when it comes to hotsampling in BG3 (with Otis Camera and DOF-addon) when using two pairs of screen monitors?

I noticed I couldn’t really hotsample like I used to when I played the game in window mode and then tried to hotsample (because when doing that, the WHOLE screen including the reshade menu were trippled/hotsampled, which meant I couldn’t reach the render button) so I reverted back to playing the game in fullscreen, then it worked like it should and like it’s been before. The thing is, I had one monitor when I started with hotsampling and then I got another new one recently (this is also why I had some trouble getting it to work and also not having the reshade menu hotsampled too, because it didnt happened when I had only one monitor).

Sorry this got long but just wanted to give some background info, anyway - When hotsampling, and when it works, is there a solution to only hotsample the one monitor? When I do it the pic stretches to the second monitor too, I know I have them aligned and its a setting but I would like to be able to - hotsample on one of my monitors, so i can use the second monitor for other stuff like Spotify, Netflix, youtube etc WHILE hotsampling. Is this possible? Hope this makes sense and sorry this got very long! Thanks a lot!!

Hi anon!

I'm really sorry, I don't know anything about using more than one monitor, I wouldn't know how to advise you. I know lots of the really good screenshooters out there use multiple monitors, so it must be possible.

I suggest asking this in Otis' ReShade server, the people there will be a lot more knowledgeable about it than me! I hope you find your answer!

[pictureamoebae]

Hi! I saw the ask about your high res shots and I'm not sure if you know the answer to this but, is it possible to use SRWE with Skyrim and Fallout 4 w/out breaking the game? Or does it just not work with those particular games? When I try, the game gets larger (like its supposed to) but when I try to shrink it back down to it's normal resolution the game is in a smaller resolution (I've had it go into 800x600 before) and I have to restart my entire PC because of it. The screenshot itself is also a normal 1920x1080 :(

Hi! Hotsampling with SRWE works for Skyrim Special Edition, but not for original Skyrim or Fallout 4.

You can still use SRWE with those 2 games to help downsample (which is somewhat different to hotsampling), but it involves changing the resolution in the games’ ini files, say to 4k for example, and then using SRWE to shrink it back down to fit on your monitor. You then have to play the game downsampled, which is a lot more taxing on your PC than momentarily hotsampling. And you have to stick with whatever resolution and aspect ratio you choose for that gaming session - you have to close the game each time you want to re-edit the ini files for a different resolution.

I played Fallout 4 this way, and it was fine, but you need to know your hardware can handle it over extended periods first, and make allowances for potentially bad fps as a result. But then again, I have an ageing 980Ti gpu - the newest models shouldn’t have any problem at all. But if you intend to stick to the same aspect ratio as your monitor and you can handle a downsampled game you’re probably better off just using DSR (dynamic super resolution via nvidia’s control panel) instead.

[pictureamoebae]

So, I installed your Clear Bloom reshade and have some time with it. It's great, thanks for your hard work. I have a problem though with my screenshots though. When I view them in full screen on my computer they look grainy. Specially the faces and skin. I turned off Deband (like you said in the readme) and SurfaceSharpen. But it still happens. However when I view the pictures with my phone they don't look as grainy (or maybe they do). Do you know anything that could help? Thank you very much.

Is this a marked difference to how your screenshots usually look when not using Clear Bloom, or is it just that you’re studying them harder now you’re using a ReShade preset?

One reason why screenshots of all types often look a lot better on a phone screen than on a PC monitor is that phone screens have fewer pixels, and so pictures are downsampled to fit. 

Downsampling is when pixel information is squeezed into a smaller space, eliminating any gaps and/or need for interpolation (interpolation in this sense is where information is created to fill in those gaps, information that didn’t exist in the first place). Downsampled screenshots will have less aliasing (jagged edges) and look cleaner (but interestingly lower res screenshots often look sharper, but this is fake sharpness, it’s actually a result of aliasing and isn’t desired - extra sharpening can be added to larger resolution shots if required). 

This isn’t just true of viewing on a phone, but also if you view a 4k screenshot on a 1080p monitor, and so on. It’s why I and others take screenshots at higher resolutions than our native monitor’s resolution (using SRWE or DSR or whatever other method is available to us).

Here is a comparison I took in Dragon Age: Inquisition. The first picture was taken at 1080p and cropped to that shape; the second picture (when you hover the mouse over it) was taken at 6k and resized down to the same as the original (that resizing is also called downsampling). Spend a moment flicking between them and you can see just how much more pixel information is available in the 6k picture. There are new blades of grass, individual fern leaves suddenly appear, the mist and shadows have more depth, and everything just looks smoother and more real. All of that information you can see now was always there, but with fewer pixels to capture it at lower resolutions some of it gets missed out of the scene, some of it is interpolated, and generally the picture just looks much poorer.

This is what is happening when you view a picture on your PC monitor and then on your phone screen.

Of course, that might not be the source of all the graininess you’re seeing. I would take some screenshots of the same scene both with and without ReShade and compare them, first of all. What do you see? Where are the problem areas specifically and to what extent are they there without ReShade? Could some of this be that the new lighting is simply exacerbating issues that were already there? With so many shaders being used, particularly those that alter contrast, textures can be made more visible, perhaps rougher. Take any photo of yourself and open it in a photo editor and play around with the contrast and see what it does to the texture of your skin.

It’s also possible that there may be artefacts created by the shaders themselves, but to rule out which may be responsible you’d need to go through turning one off, checking the result, turning it back on, then turning the next one off, checking, and so on.

To recap: 1) is it possible you’re only noticing the textures because you’re spending more time looking at pictures in detail now? 2) pictures always look better displayed at a size smaller than the resolution at which they were taken; 3) contrast can enhance or minimise textures; 4) shaders can introduce artefacts, you’d need to methodically go through them to see if that’s the case.

[pictureamoebae]

hey! how are you? i was wondering if you knew something similar to srwe that can work on mac? thanks on advance

Hi there!

There’s another program called Windowed Borderless Gaming (WBG) that does the same as SRWE in a slightly different way, I’m not sure if that works on a Mac, you could try. Same with GeDoSaTo. The limitation may be because of differences in how windows are rendered between the two operating systems, in which case separate versions of the tools would need to be made.

Incidentally, for Windows users, those two other programs are worth downloading if you play other games, because sometimes SRWE won’t work but one of the others will, and vice versa. Unfortunately though sometimes a game simply won’t hotsample at all *glares at no mans sky*

There is also DSR (dynamic super resolution, if you have an nvidia card) — I’m not sure whether graphics drivers are entirely different for Macs (it’s been ages since I had one and I don’t think I ever once updated my driver while I had it), but certainly on Windows machines you can go into the nvidia control panel to specify a set of additional resolutions you want to be able to use in games, and then in DSR-compatible games you can choose one of those resolutions in the game menu. This is downsampling, rather than hotsampling, and requires a decent computer to use because you’ll be playing the game at those larger resolutions, rather than just quickly changing it for a screenshot. This is how I took my 4k shots in No Man’s Sky (until the Beyond update, which has ruined performance for almost everyone T_T).

[pictureamoebae]

hi hello sorry if you've already answered this before (even though i checked through your faq tag and i thiiink my question hasn't been asked yet??) but for some reason mxao & dof stopped working for me?? it worked before but then for some reason now it doesn't show up?? i checked and even with the box checked nothing shows up. i'm not sure if i did something wrong or what but i don't think i've changed anything from when i first started using reshade so idk what happened

Hi anon, I’m sorry you’re having problems.

First thing to do is check whether Edge Smoothing has accidentally been re-enabled in the game’s graphics options. I don’t think this can happen automatically via a patch, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. It will also be reset if you ever change the overall graphics quality (the main drop-down above the individual graphics options). It’s easy done, without realising, and if Edge Smoothing is on it will stop any depth effects in ReShade (like dof, mxao, adaptive fog etc) from working.

The next thing to check are your preprocessor definitions. Depending on your version of ReShade you’ll either find them in the Settings tab (for v. 3.x) or via a button at the top of the bottom pane in the main Home tab (v. 4.x). Check that the entries for depth being ‘reversed’, ‘upside-down’, and ‘logarithmic’ are all set to 0. If any of them are set to 1, change them to 0 and press Reload at the bottom.

If all of that is in order, the next thing you can check is a little more advanced, but easy to do. 

Depth effects like mxao and dof require ReShade to hook itself into the game’s own depth buffer at the right time. There are lots of different things all happening at roughly the same time when the game uses its own post-processing and rendering, and it will order them so each happens at the correct time, one after another, so they work together properly. Think of it like a series of layers in Photoshop, where the finished image will look different depending on how you order those layers. The developers have arranged all those ‘layers’ so that they all work together optimally, both for performance and for aesthetics.

ReShade has to inject itself into the game at the correct time for it to look right. Usually this is at the end, so it layers its effects over the top of the game’s own effects. For depth effects, however, in order to get access to the depth buffer it has to inject itself in earlier, at just the right time. It doesn’t always get this right, because it’s fighting against the game. You can manually override this though, which can help solve some issues.

In the ReShade menu at the top the very last tab will say dx9 (or dx11 if you’re playing a dx11 game – this is the same process for all games). Click on that tab and you’ll see a few boxes with long strings of numbers and weird incomprehensible stuff, and some of them may have numbers that are rapidly calculating and changing. These are the depth buffers. While you’ve got one of your depth effects enabled, tick one of these boxes in the dx9 tab, and see what happens. If nothing happens, move down to the next one, and so on. Eventually, hopefully, you’ll find the correct one that hooks into the depth buffer properly. You may have to go into this tab and do it every time you load the game or if you use SRWE for hotsampling after every time you render a new resolution. Sometimes the box you need to tick may change depending on the map you’re loaded into, so be prepared for some trial and error.

This is what I’m having to do in The Outer Worlds. It forgets the depth buffer and keeps rendering it in the wrong part of the rendering pipeline, meaning in this case it blurs the whole image rather than using the depth. So I have to go into the dx11 tab and click one of the boxes to get it to work again. And because I hotsample, I have to bring up the menu while I’m hotsampled and do it there too, which is really painful because I use big resolutions that knock me down to 1fps. But it gets the job done.

If none of these things are working, I’d go and check all the usual sorts of things like turning off Origin In-Game, running the game (and Origin) as administrator, making sure you don’t have any other programs running (even as background processes) that use any kind of overlay, make sure you are up-to-date with your graphics drivers and Windows updates, etc. And then, when all else fails, uninstall ReShade and reinstall it from scratch (make a backup of your current installation so you can paste it back in if you need to). And if that doesn’t work, try a different version of ReShade.

Hopefully, somewhere in all of that, is a solution for you. I tested the game a week or so ago, having not picked it up since before Moschino came out, because someone else was noticing weird behaviour with mxao. I got that same weird behaviour, so I think a recent patch to the game has altered the behaviour of the game’s depth buffer in some way. It’s entirely possible this is causing other problems (our problem was mxao fading or disappearing when you move the camera up). There is, unfortunately, only so much we can do our end if Maxis have changed something to how they render the game. ReShade is a nifty little tool that tries to take into consideration all the weird ways developers set up their games, but they can’t account for everything. But hopefully this isn’t the case here and it is something we can fix for you. Please let me know if any of the steps above helped.

[pictureamoebae]

Sorry to bother you but, how do you keep your image quality so high?

Hi there anon.

As well as using ReShade I use a program called SRWE. It allows me to do what is called hotsampling. That means I can take screenshots at really large sizes, which increases the image quality. 

I’ve written a lot about SRWE before and answered a lot of questions. I have the SRWE FAQ tag you can look through, and I wrote a comprehensive tutorial on how to use it (the tutorial uses Mass Effect Andromeda but the steps are the same for TS4).

[pictureamoebae]

Omg this image: post/186165464224/ is absolutely breathtaking! I would love to know which reshade you used if you would be willing to share, as well as how in the heck you managed to get it so hq?!!? your skills seriously astonish me! thank you so much!

!!! Thank you, anon!

I’m using my Clear Bloom ReShade, and in that picture I used Caph from the MultiLUT shader (which is an option built into Clear Bloom).

As for the image quality, I use a program called SRWE to do what is called hotsampling. It means I can change the aspect ratio (shape of the game window) and the resolution whenever I want, allowing for really huge pictures that are far bigger than would ordinarily fit on my monitor. When you take much larger pictures like that it means there’s a lot more pixel information available, so the end result looks a lot better than it would normally. I wrote a tutorial on how to use SRWE a while ago -- it uses Mass Effect Andromeda as its example game, but the steps are the same for TS4. I use the srwe faq tag on my blog if you need to look up any issues.

[pictureamoebae]

Hii! Quick question, did you use topaz for the clear bloom screenies or do you have an edit tutorial? Theyre so beautiful!

Hi there! Thank you for the kind words, anon! 

No, I don’t do any post editing on my screenshots except to resize them for tumblr (full sizes are uploaded to flickr). 

I use ReShade, obviously, and I use SRWE to hotsample. I’ve answered lots of questions about SRWE in the past, and I have an SRWE FAQ tag you can search through to find out all about it.

I think I’m going to have to make a proper FAQ page for ReShade, screenshot, and cc questions so all this information is in one place!