Software Shader opinions

[Anime Viewer]

With all the software shaders to choose from its often hard to tell what shaders provide a better picture, and which shaders hurt picture quality. As a result a thread to discuss the positives and negatives of different shaders might be useful for people in determining if he/she should use a particular shader in combination with the player and filters he/she is using.

To start things off I've included screen shots - what looks better to you? The left side images, or the right side images? To try to keep things unbiased (against particular shaders) I will not name what shader(s) were used, nor which setting might be on or off.

Image quality is often subjective, but lets hear everyone's opinions based on included images.

http://i.imgur.com/m8V0kGf.jpg

My thoughts are the lighter colors (yellow/blond) may be displayed better in the left images (more yellowish shades that look less washed out) and darker colors (black, purple, blue) may be displayed better (deeper dark colors that look less washed out) in the right side images. (font above changed to white since I couldn't find working spoiler tags - drag cursor over text to read).

[vivan]

Merging everything into one image is a horrible idea - it not only makes actual comparison hard because you can't switch between pictures, but also breaks forum layout. Use links instead.
Also don't use imgur for such tasks - they recompress everything to jpg (in most cases), so we get additional artifacts.

Anyway, pics on the right are way too overcontrast. Looking at them is just painful.

[huhn]

the level look totally different the right is brighter but the faces look terrible they look plain white in the right.

i can't use my 3d lut easily on them so hard to judge. but it looks like the right picture is clipping black and white a bit.
the clothes of Mizuki (purple hair first picture) loose nearly of it's pink in the right screen but in the shadow you can see it should have pink in it like the left picture.

so i choice left as the better picture.

[raffriff42]

The right side images are "blown out," having an extra TV->PC range conversion.

This can be seen easily with a short Avisynth script:## FRAME STEP ONLY -NOT REAL TIME
ImageSource("m8V0kGf.jpg")
Interleave(
\ Crop( 0, 3, 1272, 712),
\ Crop(1277, 0, 1272, 712),
\ Crop( 2, 722, 1272, 712),
\ Crop(1276, 722, 1272, 712),
\ Crop( 2, 1438, 1272, 712),
\ Crop(1276, 1438, 1272, 712)
\ )
return Last

[CeeJay.dk]

It looks like the right side has Levels applied.

Too much levels.
I see clipping, which Levels can cause.

I can't tell if it's my Levels (SweetFX Levels)or the MPC levels or some other one, because Levels look the same if set to the same settings.

My Curves shader can also increase contrast but it's harder to cause clipping like this with it.

No form of sharpening or bloom seems to have been used.

In general I find it difficult to find settings and combinations of shaders that work well for all content as it differs from content to content, so instead I use very mild touches that are very unlikely to ruin any video, although it does not achieve as good a result as tweaking settings for that video does - I don't have time for that. I just want to watch videos.

My default settings use a little bit of Lumasharpening and a little bit of Curves - both from SweetFX video shaders package.