Guide to GShade

 UPDATE: 25/07/25: I have had at least 3 hits from ChatGPT on this blog. If this is a result from one of you running this through ChatGPT to summarise it - DO NOT RUN ANY OF THIS BLOG THROUGH AI. I explain things at length to ensure CLARITY OF INSTRUCTION. If you screw up your project because you let your misinformation robot friend summarise the thing I spent HOURS writing, don't come crying to me asking for further help. And don't ask your misinformation robot friend for help either - READ THE DAMN TUTORIAL. 

UPDATE: 24/05/25: includes details about the DirectX11 update. I also made a few edits surrounding the mention of Performance Mode, and also noted that the version of ReLight shown here is old.

UPDATE: 15/01/24: Back during early 2023, the GShade dev came under fire for putting in a specific kind of harmful code that would target a small amount of users of GShade. This WOULD NOT affect normal users of the program, it was a sort of 'attack' on some sort of additional code / program that someone made for GShade. It did not affect generic users.

If it detected this additional code/program/whatever, it would forcibly reboot the PC and as such could have caused issues including file deletion. This did not affect regular users of GShade, and has since been removed, but I'm leaving this here for clarity's sake because people are right to be wary of shitty dev behaviour.  

If you're concerned about the GShade issue above but still want to go ahead and use it, you can safely download this stable older version here, the 3.5.0 version, which was created before that event happened.

All of my GShade presets I use for the story can be downloaded here.

You can also alternatively use ReShade, which does 90% of the same job and many Sims players use this instead anyway. I didn't personally get on well with ReShade, but most people get on well with it.

For those of you who play on PC, GShade is an amazing graphics injector program that can completely transform the way you play your game and the way you take screenshots- perfect for storytellers!

- For a tutorial on how to convert your ReShade presets to be GShade-compatible, look here. 
- This will teach you how to uninstall ReShade. Backup the folder before deleting any files!

IMPORTANT NOTES: Running graphics injectors can be stress-heavy for PCs, so go careful before downloading GShade on an older or less-powerful PC model. I also advise not using GShade presets for gameplay unless you have a strong enough PC to handle it. I only use GShade presets for screenshotting purposes. If you find your performance dropping greatly, or your PC temperature is very high, or you have any other concerns then uninstall GShade.

If you already use ReShade, GShade I would say is much better at least for my use. Many people started using it after ReShade 5.1 broke after a patch. GShade runs much smoother and is less heavy on my PC at least, and also according to other players it has more compatability with a wider range of ReShade presets, so you don't have to limit yourself to only being able to download ReShade presets for a very specific version of ReShade. This is just my opinion, though.

CONTENTS

1. Installing GShade
2. Installing GShade Presets / Making your Own GShade Presets
3. Exploring Shaders
4. Using ReLight Shader
5. My GShade Preset Downloads
   

1. Installing GShade

1. Clearly follow all the instructions laid out here.
   
   NOTE: If your TS4 game uses DirectX11 instead of DirectX9, make sure you instead select 'DirectX11' instead of 'DirectX9'. You'll know if it uses DX11 because on the main menu screen, it will come up on the end of the Game Version number in the corner of the screen.
   
   For the newer GShade, there's an up-to-date tutorial on how to install it here. (Ignore the ReLight part, we come to that later.)
   NOTE: If you are using the 3.5.0 older version above, and you do not want your GShade updating, turn off your Internet whilst you download and install GShade so it can't update whilst you download 3.5.0.
   
   
2. if you installed it correctly, a GShade bar should come up at the top when the game starts. If not, press Shift + F2 to bring up the GShade overlay menu (It's more or less the same as the ReShade one layout-wise.)
   
   
   
   
   
3. Click the Setting bar at the top, and then change your Overlay toggle key to whatever keyboard key you want. I set mine to 'Home'. Then pressing this key will bring up or close the overlay where you change all of the parameters.
   
   
4. Where it says Shader Toggle Key, change that to whatever key you like. This will toggle the active tickboxes/shaders on and off without deleting any presets you create. Great for screenshots!
   
   
5. At the bottom, select a key other than C for Screenshots. This will then send a screenshot to the folder you chose during installation with all your current shaders and effects active on it. NOTE: Make sure you use the GShade Screenshot Key for screenshots from now on, and not the in-game C key, so that your screenshot will have your preset/shaders applied. 
   
   
   
   
   
6. Pressing ‘Active to Top’ will bring all active effects/shaders to the top. Some of them might take a while to load, so don't be alarmed if they don't boot up straight away. To begin, it's worth playing around and seeing what the different shaders do.
   
   
   
   
   
   Some bars will come up underneath, allowing you to toggle the shader in whatever way you'd like.
   
   
   
7. Go back to Settings, at the bottom it’s got a User Interface box. Use it to change the interface colour (the red was a little harsh for me).

2. Installing GShade Presets / Making your own GShade Presets

If you look on Tumblr, you'll find people making their own presets for GShade and sharing them just like with ReShade. The install process is virtually the same, but I'm going to share it here anyway for clarity's sake and for people who haven't used ReShade:

1. Download the .ini file. 
2. Navigate to your TS4 download folder's Bin folder, then to gshade-presets and pop it in there. It'll come up ready to use the next time you boot the game.

To make your own, then all you have to do is click the little plus button in the top-right-hand corner, name your preset, then press Enter.

If you currently have a preset loaded, click the 'Copy Current Preset' tickbox if you'd like to copy the active effects on your current preset, to the new one.

NOTE: If you right-click one of the shaders (for example, MXAO) you can add a toggle key to a specific shader. For example, if you wanted to have it so you could toggle MXAO shadows on and off you can add a toggle key for that in your presets.

People often talk about the order of the actual shaders in presets, though this seems to be something more for gameplay presets than screenshot ones. Unfortunately I don't know much about it, but sometimes the look of a preset can change by moving the shaders around (more clearly seen if you move MXAO or a Depth of Field shader). You can drag them around as much as you like to see what works. The official GShade guide has a loose guide of its own to shader orders, and how many to use, though as I said that's more for gameplay presets. 

My personal advice, ALWAYS have MXAO at the top, and then anything Depth of Field-related after that. If you are using ReLight, have that always above the other shaders right at the very top.

3. Exploring Shaders

The initial fun of GShade is exploring what all of the different shaders do. Do some trial-and-error and see what works. I keep a text document with all possible useful shaders written on it so I remember. Here's the ones I use often:
NOTE: Depending on what version of GShade you have, you may not have some of these available.

• ADOF/CinematicDOF: Depth-of-field never worked for me in ReShade for some reason (I was probably doing something wrong) but it looks amazing. You can manually edit the blur of near and far objects, or some let you use your Mouse to select focal points.
  
  ADoF is good for automatic depth-of-field, and CinematicDoF is better for controlled depth-of-field. With the Cinematic one, you can use your mouse to select the focal point and the rest will be blurred out accordingly.
  
  
• MXAO: (As far as I am aware, you can only use this if Edge Smoothing is turned OFF in your Game settings.) MXAO adds extra shadow and depth to screenshots and often looks incredible. There's a full guide to it here.
  
  
• prod80_04_BrightnessContrastSaturation: These are vital for screenshot editing.
  
• prod80_03_Shadows/Midtones/Highlights: For editing lighting.
  
• Levels: Edit the black/white levels.
• MC-DAO: Something to help add shadow to an image. It can be a bit too much in certain scenes, or look washed-out, but sometimes works.
  
• AdaptiveTint: A gradient colour tint over the screen.
• SunsetFilter: I often use this for harsh light.
• AdaptiveSharpen
• Bloom / ArcaneBloom: Adds a soft sort of light to the image. 
• AdvancedCRT: Gives an old television-ish look.
  
• ChromaticAberration - adds a sort of RGB-ish 'glow' distortion that might work well for certain chaotic scenes, like magic or psychic power.
• Spotlight: can be used to add glowy lighting, though I now use ReLight for this purpose, but this still works well for lamps and fireplaces and such.
• HDR and FakeHDR: seems to apply some level of brightness, contrast and ambient occulsion.
• Halftone: resembles print.
• Sketch: resembles a drawing 
• PPFX Godrays - allows long 'streams' of light, good for light through windows.
  

4. Using the ReLight Shader

UPDATE 24/05/25: This version of ReLight is now old, and the new version is a paid product. But this version still works well. 

A relatively-new (not as of 2025, but at the time of writing this section) shader is ReLight, which allows adding extra lights into a scene and it looks amazing.
NOTE: To my knowledge, ReLight does not work with the old 3.5.0 edition of GShade, so I think you can only use it if you update it.
- This tutorial will show you how to download both GShade and ReLight.
- A link to the download of the ReLight ALPHA 0.2 shader.

IMPORTANT NOTE: the Performance Mode tickbox at the bottom, turn it ON when you are just using the preset to take pictures. When you are actually editing the parameters of the preset, UNTICK Performance Mode and then TICK Performance Mode when you're done editing the parameters.

 

Scroll down on the shader until you get to this part, with all of the parameters for the lights.

 

- Tick the 'Visualise Light Position' box and each light will come up as a circle, so you can position them easier. Then untick this once you have all the lights positioned the way you want them.
- Where it says 'Position' : The box on the left controls the X axis, the box on the right controls the Y axis, and the box on the end controls the 'angle' of the light.
- You can use the R, G and B or the 'Tint' colour box to change the colour of the light.
- Intensity controls the brightness of the light.
- AMOUNT_OF_LIGHTS is self-explanatory. I never use more than 3. 

The 'Trace Shadows' checkbox will change how the lighting works. Leave it on for best results, IMO.

For my lookbooks, I like having a lot of bright colours. 

A general piece of advice I've learned from what I've read online, is of course to go careful when lighting darkskin characters that you don't make the tones look too whitewashed or too ashy with your lighting. You don't want your lighting to be lightening the skin tone of the subject of the image. Inspired by what I've seen from various photographers and cinematographers online, I tend to go for less-intense but more-vibrant colours that aren't too light so that I don't change the original skintone. A photographer/filmmaker on Reddit said to focus on strong edge lighting, which is mostly what I try to do.

 

Using 3 coloured lights in different positions... We go from this (using my Lookbook preset)  

To this (using my Lookbook preset with ReLight on top)

 

As you can see, it's a lot more vibrant and pleasant to look at. You can also use ReLight more subtly, for lamp-posts, moonlight and such. I used ti here to make it look like the light is shining on the woman: