What is Reshade? Make any game look better with this app

Developed by Crosire, Reshade is a piece of software that could make your games look way better thanks to the community that has been built around it.

Reshade, which describes itself as a “post-processing injector”, is as it says. However, what does that even mean? Essentially, Reshade is a program designed to “inject” a particular preset into your games by overriding the various shaders that games use to show off graphics.

How does Reshade work?

By latching onto OpenGL, its successor Vulkan, and Microsoft’s DirectX, it can change how a game looks from upping the saturation to completely changing the color grading entirely.

Why would you do this? Well, it’s entirely based on personal preference. Depending on how you like your games to look, a lot of the alterations available from the community seem to focus on hitting a specific style that the original game didn’t provide.

From GTAV’s massive list of presets, to Counter-Strike and even Watch Dogs, it is filled to the brim with modifications to suit almost any need.

Crosire does warn that Reshade can take up additional resources in your games, which they use as an indication that the program is actually working.

Reshade currently supports up to 2725 games, though some of them have no presets uploaded right now. That isn’t to say you can’t handle those yourself though, as the software is relatively easy to use, and uploading to the site doesn’t seem too difficult.

Installing the app is relatively simple too. All you’ll need to do is download the “SweetFX Configurator” and follow any on-screen instructions when you click through to it. It should begin to automatically detect your game, and changing your presets can be done within the configuration window.

The community is relatively active in the forums, as well as Discord, so you better get going, as there are oodles of games that can be used with the program.