No ENB looks right

[Jailhouseblues]

Hey guys I have a problem. I am pretty experienced with installing ENBs, so I am positive wrong installation is not the culprit here, though there may always be something I might have overlooked. However, I am sure I installed everything correctly.

 

So let me get to the point. I have two computers now, one is a laptop, and the other is desktop, which I built recently for heavy gaming. My laptop is also pretty capable. I first installed ENBs on my laptop and they would look gorgeous however I would get 20-25 FPS average so at some point I concluded that it was unplayable. When I installed ENB on my desktop, I got good frames, so I was happy about that, however, NONE of the ENBs I tried look as good as they did on my laptop screen.. Except Vividian ENB, but other ENBs which previously would make my jaw drop, looks relatively unimpressive here and it's not just my eye getting used to them. They all just look so... bland and hideously sharp. (Even on the lowest sharpness setting)

 

Now I am thinking it's a monitor issue. Since I don't have a PC monitor as of now, I am using a Samsung Plasma TV and a VGA cable connected to a VGA to DVI adapter (Also tried HDMI, same results). I tried calibrating it, playing around with its settings for hours, and while I did get a small improvement on the overall quality of the picture, it was not even close to being enough. So here's a stupid question. Will the kind of display device I have, affect how the ENB looks? I am sure my brightness, contrast and gamma settings are right, but it just never looks right, so I can't decide if it is an issue with my Plasma TV, or if it is an internal issue. What do you guys think? Should I get a legit PC monitor?

 

Here's a screenshot I took using T.A.Z Visual Overhaul. Not sure if it is enough to describe the problem, or if you have to see it in person to understand.

 

https://i.imgur.com/rmyWYNl.jpg

Edited June 22, 2015 by Jailhouseblues

[TechAngel85]

If you have all the INI settings correct (bFloat...) and everything looks good without ENB, then I would guess it's the monitor as well. Those aren't really made for PC gaming. There are several users around here that use TVs for their display though. For me, the quality is far inferior on every TV I've hooked my computer up to.

[Aiyen]

Based on the screenshot the only things that look a bit off is some of the textures which might not be the best for that particular preset. 

 

Best thing I can suggest is that you try to adjust whatever brightness or contrast values the preset has in its enbeffect.fx file. The differences between contrast from a monitor to a TV can be quite huge. 

 

Also most presets have sharpness as a seperate option as well, you can try to reduce that amount as well. If your monitor does sharpening there is no point in also having post processing doing it most of the time. 

[Pretendeavor]

I would still recommend HDMI over a VGA to DVI cable btw, even though you say you do not notice much of a difference. I have some sort of 'hybrid' TV/Pc screen (27 inch) and I do notice the difference between those 2 cables. The quality doesn't come close to my 24 inch pc monitor, but it does have the 'enb look' (to my eyes at least :p). It's no plasma screen though. Like Aiyen said, I'd recommend looking at the sharpening options again even if you have gone through the standard calibration procedures. For example, I had to set my 'Sharpness' settings on that screen to 13/100 (with the default being 50/100). For some reason everything looks horrible and any text hurts my eyes if I set this higher than 20.

 

I'm not sure how to go about disabling sharpness as an option in the enb files, but if you use SweetFX too you might want to try disabling Lumasharpen. Another thing you might want to look at is ForceLodBias & LodBias in enblocal.ini. Some presets use a pretty high negative bias in their enblocal ini files.

 

Then it might just be an issue with the size of the screen vs the resolution? If you play in 1080p on a 40" screen and you sit 30 cm from the screen it probably doesn't look all that impressive :p

[z929669]

HDMI and DVI should show no difference at all, since they both carry the same digital signal (but agree that there will probably be loss in analog to digital adapter). The issue stated in the OP is almost certainly the monitor/TV (pixels per inch diffs), but it could be diffs with the GPU as well.