NVIDIA Image Sharpening Guide for DirectX, Vulkan, OpenGL!

NVIDIA Game Ready drivers now support Image Sharpening for Vulkan and OpenGL, as well as DirectX games. However, you will need to manually turned it on, and set it up.

In this guide, we will share with you the benefits of turning on NVIDIA Image Sharpening, and how to turn it on for your DirectX, Vulkan and OpenGL games!

 

NVIDIA Image Sharpening For DirectX, Vulkan + OpenGL

NVIDIA first introduced Image Sharpening as a NVIDIA Freestyle filter. They then built it into the NVIDIA Control Panel, enabling it for all DirectX 9, 10, 11 and 12 games in the Game Ready 441.08 driver onwards.

Starting with Game Ready 441.41, they officially added NVIDIA Image Sharpening support for Vulkan and OpenGL games too.

Image sharpness can be adjusted on a per-game basis, or applied globally for all supported titles, with per-game settings overriding global settings.

In addition, you can use your NVIDIA GPU to render at a lower resolution for improved performance, and scale it to the monitor’s native resolution, using Image Sharpening to improved the clarity of the upscaled images.

However, this is a global setting, and cannot be disabled or enabled on a per-game basis.

Note that if you are using a GeForce RTX or GeForce GTX 16-series graphics card, they will leverage the Turing GPU’s 5-tap scaling technology for better image quality.

Recommended : Learn How To Add ReShade Filters To GeForce Experience!

 

NVIDIA Image Sharpening : How To Enable It Globally

  1. Download and install GeForce Game Ready 441.41 driver or newer.
  2. Open the NVIDIA Control Panel, and click on Manage 3D settings.
  3. Scroll down the Global Settings tab to Image Sharpening.
  4. Select the On option, and you will have three further options.
    GPU Scaling : All resolutions below the monitor native resolution will be upscaled by the GPU
    Sharpen (0 to 1.0) : This controls the amount of image sharpening
    Ignore film grain (0 to 1.0) : This reduces any film grain that is generated by image sharpening
  5. Click OK and you are done!

Note : GPU Scaling is only available as a Global setting.

Recommended : How To Enable NVIDIA NULL For G-SYNC Monitors Correctly!

 

NVIDIA Image Sharpening : How To Enable It On A Per-App Basis

  1. Download and install GeForce Game Ready 441.41 driver or newer.
  2. Open the NVIDIA Control Panel, and click on Manage 3D settings.
  3. Click on the Program Settings tab and select the game you want to apply image sharpening.
    If you cannot find the game, click Add, choose the desired game and click Add Selected Program
  4. Scroll down to Image Sharpening.
  5. Select the On option, and you will have two further options.
    Sharpen (0 to 1.0) : This controls the amount of image sharpening
    Ignore film grain (0 to 1.0) : This reduces any film grain that is generated by image sharpening
  6. Click OK and you are done!

Note that the per-app setting will override the global settings.

 

NVIDIA Image Sharpening : Current Limitations

As of 26 November 2019, NVIDIA Image Sharpening has the following limitations :

  • Scaling is not supported on MSHybrid systems.
  • HDR displays driven by pre-Turing GPUs will not support scaling
  • Scaling will not work with VR
  • Scaling will not work with displays using YUV420 format.
  • Scaling uses aspect ration scaling and will not use integer scaling
  • Sharpening will not work with HDR displays
  • GPU scaling engages when games are played only in full-screen mode, and not in windowed or borderless windowed mode.
  • Some G-SYNC displays have a 6-tap / 64-phase scaler which scales better than that offered by Turing’s 5-tap/32-phase scaler.
  • To avoid accidentally triggering scaling by applications or DWM, first change to the desired (non-native) resolution from the NVIDIA Control Panel and then launch the application.
  • Turing’s 5-tap upscaler may not engage on certain monitors, based on the monitor’s vblank timing.
  • Turing’s 5-tap upscaler may not engage if the input resolution is greater than 2560 pixels in either the x or y dimension.
  • Scaling is turned off automatically when switching display devices.
  • “Restore Defaults” option in the control panel currently does not revert the upscaling resolution.

 

Death Stranding : Get It FREE With GeForce RTX!

From now until 29 July 2020, you will receive a Steam code for the PC digital download edition of Death Stranding with the purchase of these selected GeForce RTX graphics card, laptop or desktop!

 

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