Cyberpunk 2077

Shot by Lazaro

Summary

Feature Supported
Vanilla Photo Mode Yes
Hotsampling Yes (with tools)
DSR Yes
Custom Aspect Ratios Yes
Reshade Yes (4.9.1+)
Ansel No
Graphics API DirectX 12
Game version 1.52

Tools

Essential Mods

Mods for Setting Up Screenshots

  • Appearance Menu Mod / Discord
    Features: Spawn, move and remove characters and objects. Save and teleport to locations. Enables look at for any pose. Removes many limits of photo mode. And much, much more.
  • Object Spawner
    Features: Spawn over 16k different items.
  • Freefly
    Features: Enable noclip to fly V to places you wouldn't normally be able to reach.
  • Appearance Change Unlocker with Character Customization Anywhere
    Features: allows editing of your V while in-game. The first mod unlocks full character customisation at apartment mirrors and the second mod enables that feature to be activated anywhere with a hotkey. This replaces the CyberCAT save editor.

Graphical Tweaks

  • Cinematic RTX
    Features: Boosts raytracing quality.
  • Settings Manager
    Features: Save your games graphics settings to presets, and switch between them anytime.
    NOTE: If you have a preset from an older version of the game, you may need to create new presets to avoid crashes.

Writing custom .inis

Cyberpunk 2077 allows further customisation of in-game settings through .ini tweaks. The .ini files can have any names so long as they are placed in \Cyberpunk 2077\engine\config\platform\pc.

Increase Draw Distance and Reduce Pop-in
Your mileage may vary with this one.
Paste the following in your custom .ini:

[Streaming]
DistanceBoost = 60.000000

In \Cyberpunk 2077\engine\config\platform\pc open rendering.ini and change it to: 

[LevelOfDetail]
DecalsHideDistance = 100.0

Disabling Depth of Field and Bloom
Paste the following in your custom .ini:

[Developer/FeatureToggles]
DepthOfField = False
Bloom = False

Disabling depth of field permanently disables it in photomode too!

Tips and Tricks

Appearance Menu Mod

Create more natural poses by using Appearence Menu Mod to swap an NPC to V (or anyone) to have them play out their NPC animations, enter photomode when you see a pose you want.

In the absence of Cyberlit, AMM can be used to spawn in-game lights, albeit with less control. AMM's spawner can also be used to build studios and scenes. Example.

Many pose packs are available that overwrite the games default photomode poses, see NoraLee's Pose Mod and Ferret's Poses, amongst many others available.

Reshade

There can often be lots of artifacting around hair textures and these are amplified when using various Reshade depth effects. One way to minimise this is to use RealLongExposure.fx from CobraFX to create a 'long exposure' which helps to blend together the issues. This is less of an issue with DLSS enabled.

If you find Reshade is causing performance issues, enable Copy depth buffer before clear operations until it's time to compose a shot.

CyberLit

Otis_Inf's tools for Cyberpunk include CyberLit, a powerful lighting tool that can be used to light scenes almost any way you want. A full guide to all its controls can be found here.

Camera positions can be saved using CyberLit. Create a 0 intensity light to use as your camera anchor point then use 'Move camera to light' to quickly get back to your shot angle. The same can be done by using ICGS camera paths to create multiple camera points.

Miscellaneous

In the event of another game update breaking lots of mods, you can make a copy of your Cyberpunk 2077 game folder before the update and play it outside of Steam/GOG whilst you wait for mod updates, or if you prefer to stick to a certain version of the game.

Custom Look-ats

An older version of this guide referenced photomode posing through a cheat table, the feature has been entirely remade and is now part of the Otis_Inf camera tools.

Additionally, posing using AMM is possible too.

Tip

You may also want to follow this fantastic guide by Wench to learn about using Photomode and setting up custom poses in better detail.