Special K HDR Newcomers

HDR
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Suffice to say there currently isn’t one, as Special K is a general-purpose tool in constant development which necessitates (for now at least) generalized instructions not tied to a single use case or version.

The easiest way to get “up and running” would be something like this:

  1. Open the Settings app of Windows, and navigate to System > Display .

  2. Select the HDR monitor and toggle Use HDR to On .

    • Ideally the display driver settings should also be set to a bit depth of at minimum 10-bit and use RGB or YCbCr 4:4:4 if possible. Use the Advanced display settings at the bottom of the Display settings page to identify what the display is currently set to.

  3. Download either of the previously linked versions.

  4. Extract their contents to Documents\My Mods\SpecialK

  5. Run SKIF.exe and hit “Start Service”

  6. Continue based on what type of game you want to use it with:

    • If the target game is not a Steam game you need to go to the injection tab and add the executable name of the game to the Whitelist Patterns section.
    • If the target game is a Steam game then go to the next step.

  7. Launch the game. SK’s in-game UI banner on top should appear.

  8. If the game supports a borderless window mode, select it in the preferences.

  9. Press Ctrl+⇧ Shift+← Backspace to open the control panel of Special K.

  10. Expand the Widgets section and enable HDR Display .

  11. In the top right corner a new widget called HDR Calibration will appear.

  12. Enable the scRGB HDR (16-bit) option.

  13. Restart the game to confirm everything works.

    • If everything works the Framebuffer Resolution row at the top of the Special K control panel should show (HDR) .
    • If the game does not launch properly, remove the the game-specific config file.

  14. Click on HDR at the top menu bar of the Special K control panel, and adjust the luminance of Special K’s UI as well as the Steam overlay (if playing a Steam game).

  15. In the HDR Calibration widget, adjust the settings based on the version-specific instructions provided in the previous post.