So a couple days back, I said I wanted to make a post about editing photos when you don’t use reshade. I used to be a MAC Sims 4 player, so I totally understand the FOMO of not being able to use reshade. With the rise of AI and people using GenAI to enhance their gameplay photos & even CC thumbnail previews, I’m glad there are a lot of simmers who have been sharing tons of resources & tutorials on how to make your gameplay screenies pretty with & without reshade AND WITHOUT AI <3

I’m basing this off how I used to edit my screenies back in the day. Nothing too crazy & keeping it more on the simple side for the sake of the tutorial.

This tutorial is helpful for those who:

1. Don’t use reshade
2. Use photoshop or photopea

Resources:

these are resources I use/recommend! You do not have to use all of these or at all. There are also some other tutorials I linked as well that I think are helpful and could further your journey of editing your sim screenies to look pretty ~

• Hazelmine PS actions
• Avonlea smooth actions (mimic topaz clean)
• Topaz clean
• Simbuh PS actions
• Squea PS actions (topaz clean)
• Nords PS actions 1 & 2
• Elderwisp texture packs 1 & 2
• Textures I used in the tutorial
• Buglar’s editing tutorial
• SimminginStars editing tutorial
• Awkwardwhims PSD collection
• Windslar PSD collection
• Luvlian PSD templates

So we are going from this:

Before

To this:

After

I wanted to keep it simple and not too crazy for this tutorial. It is up to you how you want to go about your editing!

1. So first off, I’m going to make my photo a little brighter. I used Simbuh’s Sunday Stroll action:

2. After that, we are going to fake topaz clean with Avonlea’s smooth sharp action:

you could skip this step if you use topaz clean.

3. Blurring the background to mimic ADOF!:

4. Adding vignette to add a little shadows to my photo!:

5. Textures & light leaks:

Lastly, I use this action to fix the size of my photo AND ADD NOISE TO MY PHOTO!!

and we get this as the final result!:

add your psd template or in game pop up to your screenshot & you’re done. Like I said before, this is just a simple way of editing your photos. You are free to go all out to transform your screenshots and trick ppl into thinking you use reshade >:3