new to all of this but, how would one go about recommending a game for special K? There is this game I am about to start playing called Shiness. I would love to take some screenshots in the game but it freaking always shows the game overlay/minimap and it all but ruins the screenshot. The artistic scope of the game is phenomenal. From playing around with SK with dragon quest I learned I can take screenshots without the minimap there. Would love to know if this can be done with Shiness also.
HUD-free screenshots should be possible in most Dx11 games, but you need to find the right shaders corresponding to the HUD on a per game basis.
Instructions:
-Make sure you’re in game where you can see the HUD. Assuming the game is Dx11, open the Render Mod Tools option in the SK control panel.
-You will see the Live Shader View section at the top left, you can shrink the other sections as you won’t need them.
-Open up the Pixel Shaders tab, and untick the option “draw on top” and enable “skip draws”. Scroll through the shader codes by hovering your mouse over them and using [ and ] to navigate. If one shader is disappearing at a time, you’re on the right track.
-Look for the shader that hides the HUD, there might be a few of them - if some of them never show up, check the Vertex Shaders tab. Whenever you’ve found a HUD shader, select the HUD option in the shader’s info.
-Once you’ve found all the necessary shaders, hit the “add to shader state”, then “store shader state” option. You should now be able to take HUDless screenshots, and SK will save your new shader settings.
I’m meant to do a base write up on how shader debugging works in SK for anyone not familiar, i’ve just been rather busy so i haven’t finished it yet.
(Kal, feel free to edit my post or correct me if i’ve gotten anything wrong)
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If this is about Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom, then sadly it’s not really possible as that game seems to use DirectX 9.
D3D9 shader toggling works or at least worked I used that a lot in older games though in some cases where D3D11 makes for transparencies D3D9 results in black textures.
Been a long time since I used SpecialK in a D3D9 title now though, Zwei games and Lightning returns versions 0.8 maybe up to 0.9 so those versions of SK are pretty old now.
Method I used was simple enough open the D3D toolkit for textures and shaders see a big list of shaders and choice of pixel or vertex and start with vertex ones.
There’s options here for highlighting and drawing shaders in wireframe I find it easier with both of these boxes check marked.
Select the first shader and then with the or ;’ buttons usually next to the enter key begin scrolling down the list moving or resizing SK’s interface to where you see the HUD elements of the game.
Whenever these begin flashing or showing up a wireframe pattern check “Shader belongs to HUD” for the other boxes here to tick.
Go through the remaining shaders find as many as these as possible some games have all in a single shader you can toggle others spread it out over multiple for varying UI bits.
Use the button to save the shader state next and you should get d3d9_shaders.ini (Or d3d11_shaders.ini)
[Pixel]
XXXXXXXX=HUD
[Vertex]
XXXXXXXX=HUD
With that saved (You may want to go through the vertex shaders if you don’t find specific UI elements.) the default key bind here is I believe it’s Ctrl+H or and that toggles off all shaders marked as HUD.
Macro usage should also be possible once you’ve verified this all works.
SpecialK’s main ini file for the game would get something like this added.
[Macro.HUDToggle]
Shift+F3=D3D11.ShaderMods.ToggleConfig d3d11_shaders_hud.ini
Shift+F4=D3D11.ShaderMods.ToggleConfig d3d11_shaders_dof.ini
The .NameHere bit can be just about anything
d3d11_shaders_hud.ini which I use would have XXXXXXXX=Disable for the UI elements.
Invoking the key binding would toggle them on and off.
DOF one is for generic effects I might not want entirely disabled but toggleable. 
D3D11_shaders.ini with XXXXXXXX=Disable are off by default, this is where the chromatic aberration and occasionally the vignette shaders end up if I find them. 
thanks guys will update you all when I have time to jump into it. Still trying to figure out how to get this thing to work with Dragon quest 11. I think I am on the right path