ENB Palette Tutorial (Updated 6-9-2017)

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ENB Palette Tutorial (Updated 6-9-2017)

I've been asked on several occasions over at Nexus how I make palettes (256x256) without 3DS Max, which is expensive and requires some time in study and practice to acquire the skills needed to work with palettes. I've also noticed a lot of visitors to this forum ask how they are made, too. All you need is Photoshop (or Gimp, or Paint.Net) and Lightroom (or Raw Therapee) to make really great palettes. By "great" I mean palettes that can easily match a 256x16 LUT. The default palette was created by following Boris' description of how they operate and by reviewing some of Tapiok's info on palette design.

The tutorial weighs in at just short of 5 MB when zipped, so you'll have to get it here. It contains the tutorial and tutorial archive with a lot of extras in it. The technique described in the tutorial will work for any other game that can use ENB (Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas, and so on).

These are the results you can get in Fallout 3 after using this tutorial. In these screen shots I'm not using anything but ENB v0.278. During the tuning process there were no adjustments to any of the ENB files (all at default values) and I did not use any external or altered add-on files (such as effect.txt). Also, in the screenshots with the tuned ENB, the only mods I'm using are Vurt's, my sunglare and grass replacer for Vurt's, RobCo Certified, a nifty backpack, and Fallout Streetlights. All other textures are default.

=============EDIT==============

I've added some screenshots of nighttime, too. I'll add a few of interiors as well. Day, night, and interior use separate palettes for full customization and to take advantage of the game engine. The code for DNI palettes are in the archive.

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Default Game (No ENB)
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After Palette Adjustment in PS and Lightroom
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Default Game (No ENB)
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After Palette Adjustment in PS and Lightroom
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Default Game (No ENB)
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After Palette Adjustment in PS and Lightroom
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And now, here's the same palette shown in the above screenshots in use during the day with the ENB tuned:


Early morning (v14.5.3 Day Palette)
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Boot scootin' around noon (v14.5.3 Day Palette)
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Nukin' the baddies - love the default lens flare (v14.5.3 Day Palette)
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Cloudy and shadows (v14.5.3 Day Palette)
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Late afternoon - my sunglare, custom sunsprite and default lens (v14.5.3 Day Palette)
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Long shadows (v14.5.3 Day Palette)
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Early evening at the crossroads (v14.5.3 Day Palette)
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Purple mountains at sunset (v14.5.3 Day Palette)
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At this point the night palette has taken over completely. The screenshots below were taken after the ENB has been tuned.

Cloudy sunset (v14.5.2 Night Palette)
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Clouds and Full Moon (v14.5.2 Night Palette)
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Glow (v14.5.2 Night Palette)
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Nighttime Nuke (v14.5.2 Night Palette)
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Street Lights (v14.5.2 Night Palette)
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Realistic Wasteland Darkness (v14.5.2 Night Palette)
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Night Vision Goggles (v14.5.2 Night Palette)
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The tutorial explains how to go about making the palette and how to tune it. The process is fairly easy, and uses only one blur technique.

~V~

Update: I've further revised (Rev 2) and streamlined the tutorial. I've also put all kinds of goodies in the tutorial archive, including palettes, color profiles, gradient, links to various pieces of software, code snippets, Photoshop plugin, and more. I tried to make it a one-stop item that will have everything you'll need to get up and running with making palettes. Link to archive with tutorial is at top of page and right here.
Last edited by Visitant on 11 Jun 2017, 01:04, edited 9 times in total.

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Re: ENB Palette Tutorial

This is very cool! A friend had just been asking about this. The only guide I had ever found was an old image guide made by Tapioks (which I still have). Thanks!
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Re: ENB Palette Tutorial

You're welcome! Since last night was one of those nights where insomnia was my running buddy, I spent some more time streamlining the process. Going to update the guide this afternoon and re-upload to dropbox. Less steps, smaller file sizes to tune...the works. Best part is, if preliminary tests work out the way I think they will then you won't have to blur the palette again after its tuned.

By the way; I absolute LOVE your work in the Grim and Somber series. The G&S ENBs, and the ENBs by Confidence Man, Bronze316, Tapioks, and Midhras are what really made me want to sit and learn how to work out an ENB to my liking. :ugeek:

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Re: ENB Palette Tutorial (Updated)

@Visitant

Wow, your screenshots speak for themselves! That is some exceptional color correction achieved with just a palette texture (i.e. for negligible FPS loss). Really fantastic how it totally neutralizes the default 'puke' color filter :P
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Re: ENB Palette Tutorial (Updated)

@Tapioks

Thanks! Boris' description and your diagram of how palettes work helped immensely. You can actually put more saturation and luminance into it in Lightroom/Raw Therapee if you want to make things really crisp and vivid - almost like an animated film. But I've found the more you go in that direction, the less control you get out of the shader file (LDR, tonemapping, and so on). You can also soften things up for a pastel-like look (some of your ENBs and mine), or add a color filter (temperature) to give an overall tint (a la Midhars). It depends on what you want to do. Either way, the "puke" stain is gone. :lol:

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Re: ENB Palette Tutorial (Updated 6-9-2017)

Visitanrt wrote: Thanks! Boris' description and your diagram of what is testogen palettes work helped immensely. You can actually put more saturation and luminance into it in Lightroom/Raw Therapee if you want to make things really crisp and vivid - almost like an animated film. But I've found the more you go in that direction, the less control you get out of the shader file (LDR, tonemapping, and so on).
That color correction makes the world of difference!
Last edited by CornellD on 17 Jul 2019, 09:23, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: ENB Palette Tutorial (Updated 6-9-2017)

This is really nice work, but... Why not just use a 3dlut? It's much more powerful anyway.

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Re: ENB Palette Tutorial (Updated 6-9-2017)

It's a bit difficult to tint a 3D LUT the same way as a black white gradient. And a 3D LUT has no adaptation feature, you'd need 4D for that.

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Re: ENB Palette Tutorial (Updated 6-9-2017)

You can easily tint a 3dlut? And adaptation does not need to be included in the LUT. That should be happening on the HDR stage anyway, yeah? The 3DLUT should generally be applied to LDR input.

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Re: ENB Palette Tutorial (Updated 6-9-2017)

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Last edited by turgor128 on 04 May 2021, 21:32, edited 1 time in total.
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