Can post-processing programs be good and effective, or are they ever only as effective as applying a photoshop filter?

Can post-processing programs be good and effective, or are they ever only as effective as applying a photoshop filter?

This shit looks like Mass Effect on the 360. Yikes.

It came out in 2013.

I compared it to Mass Effect on 360 @ 720p circa 2007. However, I was thinking it's more of a design and creativity issue. How many times have I ran around an area that looked just like that? What game are we talking about anyway?

Sanctum 2, and given the nature of the game I imagine the grafix have to suffer because of the amount of enemies that are on-screen at any given time.

Never. Developers always know better than some retard with sweetfx does on how to set the visual tone with their game.

And if this hypothetical person with a post-processing program hypothetically isn't a "retard"?

Then they would never run sweetfx or anything like it

They CAN be useful but 99,99% of them are made by retards with no sense of style.

A few games have unique areas that can be enhanced with a little post processing, but it usually just muddies a perfectly clear image, or is one of those placebo-sharpness filters, and the cherry on top is the added input lag because the game needs time to slap on it's stupid shit.

it's possible to drastically improve the look of a game with post-processing effects, obviously; most games that look nice do so because of heavy post-processing effects. however, the game developer can make use of intimate knowledge of the game scenario (i.e. level geometry data and also the function of other effects in the scene) to tune the post-processing. using stuff like reshade to improve a game's visuals can work great, but it'll always be a little hit-or-miss. as an example, I use reshade for PSO2 because it's a DX9c game from 2012 that was originally created to fit 12-player action gameplay on the PS Vita. I use a customized preset with a lightweight simulated bokeh DoF effect combined with a heavyweight MXAO effect (because I like ambient occlusion) and I think it looks really nice. sometimes the MXAO effect really looks weird though, like underwater. in other cases, the DoF effect interferes with gameplay (very rarely). fortunately, the "disable effect" button is just a hotkey away.
don't let faggots like tell you what to do. if you create a preset and you think it looks nice, run it! it's your game, enjoy it the way you want. shit like "post-processing is for retards" is just hipsterism of the worst sort

Well, I can only calls em' like I sees em' but from what I can see…graphix shit is all from the bottom up right? So if you make an uninspired generic looking turd like Destiny (that only stoners and their friends play so they can yell "DUED IM HIGH 420 R U?!") and it fares better than expected because it's shit EZ and MUH FRANDS B PLAYIN' IT…well. Then, you get pressure to make a sequel and it is also shit because marketing agents and vicious parasitic scum that run these companies cannot into good game design. Thus we have: Destiny 2. Heavily shilled. Any criticism of it was ferociously attacked on reddit (yes I did go reddit to talk about what vidya should be…and had at least 15 accounts suspended permanently)

Shaders and GFX tweaks are like makeup basically. Feel free to bantz if you care.

What the fuck are you talking about and why?

Ah, okay, but that developers don't automatically know better than this hypothetical non-"retard" would is what you're getting at, right?

No context is fun isn't it? I was just sayin' that post-processing effects can make something mediocre seem good, but never great. A solid design and art-style is more important than anything because post-processing will always be there to buff out the flaws. Better now?

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did you reply to the wrong post, or…?

Post processing is literally photoshop for video

Nope, you just arent very bright. Go ahead, post some examples of user post processing done well.

You stop what you're doing right now.

Yeah but photoshop can make things look better

The one on the left looks deformed. Look at that god damn hip. What the hell.

that is not a good example

Photoshop can make good-looking things, but what you posted is turd polishing. Or would be if the edit wasn't worse.

No it can't.

Photoshop is only good for putting cocks on anime girls.

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thigh_gap

I feel like this is supposed to be a sarcastic post, but it's actually true. Graphical mods and ENBs tend to be awful for one single reason, and that's the complete lack of ability of most modders to create assets that go complement the other assets. Your 99999 quintillion polygon model may look nice and fancy in Blender, but it's going to stick out like a sore thumb when surrounded by low-poly models.

It's pretty obviously not sarcastic. But, honestly, some most pretty much all modern game devs don't understand good visuals either, or good design in general. It's all idea copying and following trends.

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Something like SweetFX can be a fairly major improvement on older games but on modern games they're pretty much pointless unless you're going to go GTA:IV-tier autism with unplayably low framerates as a result.

Maybe some day when artificial intelligence can be trained to be an artist. That's pretty far off though.

Very few games have good-looking post FX.
Namely because a game developer's idea of post processing is "let's fill a plastic bag with piss and put it between the screen and the player" or "COLORS ARE GAY!"

looks like deformed shit mate

Isn't being unable to see shit just FUCKING GREAT? Darkness = Cool, don't you know?!