Reshade Long Exposure

Reshade Long Exposure — A Quick Guide and Review

Long Exposure in ReShade is a post-processing technique that simulates camera long-exposure effects (motion blur, light trails, glowing highlights) by accumulating and blending multiple frames. It’s popular for creating dreamy nightscapes, smooth water, and kinetic light effects in games and real-time apps.

Part 6: Advanced Cinematic Settings (Post-Processing)

Once you have the raw long exposure screenshot, it usually looks a bit flat because the blending averages out the lights and darks. You need to stack shaders. reshade long exposure

Recommended Shader Stack (Order matters - Top to Bottom in ReShade): Reshade Long Exposure — A Quick Guide and

  1. LongExposure.fx (Your base effect - set Decay to 0.90)
  2. PD80_04_Color_Correction.fx (Boost contrast to restore the "pop" lost during blending)
  3. MagicBloom.fx (Light trails need glow. Set threshold low so the ribbons of light bleed into the dark)
  4. FilmicSharpen.fx (Long exposure softens edges. A tiny 0.5 sharpen brings back texture on static buildings)

The "Pro" Secret: Take two shots.

  • Shot A: Long exposure (for the moving lights).
  • Shot B: Standard screenshot (sharp, for the background).
  • Blend them in Photoshop using "Lighten" blend mode. This ensures your background is razor sharp while your light trails are silky smooth.

1. qUINT_bloom.fx (or qUINT_lightroom.fx)

While not exclusively for long exposure, these contain "exposure" sliders that help balance the brightness after you combine multiple frames. (Remember: combining 4 frames makes the image 4x brighter if not tonemapped). LongExposure

ReShade Long Exposure vs. NVIDIA Depth of Field & DLSS 3

A note on modern tech: Frame Generation (DLSS 3 / FSR 3) creates fake interpolated frames. If you turn on ReShade Long Exposure while Frame Generation is active, the shader will blend the real frame with the AI frame, resulting in a "wobbly" or "soap opera" ghosting effect.

  • Recommendation: Turn OFF DLSS Frame Generation when using accumulation shaders. Keep DLSS Super Resolution (Upscaling) ON.