Modder has ported AMD’s new Image Sharpening to Reshade, allowing all NVIDIA & AMD gamers to use it


One of the new features that the new NAVI GPUs support is a special sharpening filter created by AMD. Now even though the red team has locked this feature for all other GPUs in its drivers, a modder was able to port it to Reshade and allow all NVIDIA and AMD gamers to use it and enhance their games.

In case you aren’t aware of, Image Sharpening can be enabled for DirectX 9, DirectX 12 and Vulkan games on AMD Radeon RX 5700 series graphics via its Control Panel, and provides contrast-adaptive sharpening combined with optional GPU upscaling that helps draw out detail and provide crisp-looking visuals.

The source code for AMD’s Image Sharpening is open to everyone, something that allowed Reddit’s member jsheard to port it to Reshade. According to the modder, this implementation will be a little slower than the driver version since ReShade doesn’t support FP16/RPM. Still, the performance hit is not big and makes it perfect for those that want to use this new Sharpening Filter.

What’s also interesting here is that this Reshade version of AMD’s Image Sharpening works on both DX11 and OpenGL games. As we’ve already noted, the driver version only works for DirectX 9, DirectX 12 and Vulkan games. As such, even the owners of the brand new NAVI GPUs can use this Reshade in order to enhance the visuals of all the DX11 games. Not only that, but contrary to the driver version, PC gamers can adjust the Reshade CAS to their liking.

Here is how you can download and setup this new setting/option for Reshade.

  1. Download ffx_a.h and ffx_cas.h from the GPUOpen repository (click “Raw” then you can Ctrl-S the file)
  2. Download my wrapper shader and save it as FidelityFX_CAS.fx (same again, “Raw” then save)
  3. Put all three files in your ReShade shader folder
  4. Tweak the sharpness parameter to your liking. AMD recommends leaving it at 0.0 for minimal artifacts but it can be increased up to 1.0 for more aggressive sharpening.