After discovering what one could do with post-processing shaders and being a part of modding communities previously (GTA5, Skyrim, The Binding of Isaac) I wanted to see if there was any way to take what was already on the screen, put it in a buffer, manipulate the data then send it back to the screen.

It turns out that such a thing was non-trivial, but there was a program that existed that intercepted what was sent to the screen first. Two, in fact - SweetFX and ReShade.

This allows for DLL injection into any game that runs on DirectX / Direct3D (versions 8-11) or OpenGL. There are a few caveats like it not being blocked by anti-cheat software, and not all games' depth-buffers can be accessed.

Anyway, all this means that you can put your own post-processing on pretty much any game. It is what most of my blog is dedicated to.

The image below is of Rainbow 6: Siege. The brightness was set at 22% - a value that seemed alright in the settings. This screenshot was taken before the changes to lighting were introduced.