Somewhere between version .279 and 0.292 (for Skyrim) the color filters for the layers of the sky were added under the SKY section (gradient filters for top, middle, horizon). This has really helped producing more realistic colors in the sky while keeping ray/volumetric ray appearances realistic as well (in the past one had to be traded for the other it seemed). However, the effect does not show up properly when reflected in the water. The water seems to reflect the raw color of the filter rather than the resulting color of the sky (I get deeper/darker blue reflections with a much lighter blue sky). This is true for the sun color filter as well (also in SKY section). The reflected colors are very unnatural. Can this be fixed? Or am I missing something?

As you can see on screenshot, sky color filters affects sky in reflection too:
http://i.imgur.com/QEezt8i.jpg
May be you have some changes in skyrimprefs.ini or mods installed which change sky properties. Or disabled sky in reflections in video options.

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I am INFP, not the brutal, godamnit.

Yes...I know the filter affects reflection. That is my point. It is the ONLY color that seems to affect my reflection (or at least there is too much reflection of the filter color). It can't be a mod since the ENB is the only software loaded that has access to the filter colors. I also checked my skyrimprefs file. Change the sky middle and high gradient color filters to see what I mean (since horizon only effects a small band). Look at the differences below.

Regular sky. Noticed how much darker the reflection is (nearly as dark as the filter; the middle filter is a lighter blue).


Sunset (sun filter color). This one is more subtle, but notice there is no pale yellow towards the center of the reflection. It is a monotone yellow very close to the filter color. The reflection also persists after the sun has set behind the mountain.

http://i.imgur.com/P5bklmu.jpg
Day time, same parameters as yours, no issues. Don't know what you waiting from me, i just modify shader constants. May be you don't have hdr enabled for reflections, if this parameter exist at all in skyrimprefs.ini. Or mod which alter sky mesh. Try at leat to not touch curve parameters and to not apply intensities of top/middle/bottom above 1 and change main gradient intensity instead, this should help if no hdr surface used.

EDIT; forgot about sunrise. Game do not render everything you see to reflection.

_________________
i5-4690k, 16Gb RAM, GTX 1060 6Gb, X-Fi Titanium, Win7 x128
I am INFP, not the brutal, godamnit.

There has never been anything wrong with any of my skyrimprefs settings. I have double checked them against all sources and your recommendations. No changes were needed.

I tried disabling selected mods to see what might be causing the problem. Finally, I disabled ALL mods and removed all added textures (with the exception of the official HD texture mods). While certain mods do seem to intensify the effect, the only time it truly goes away is when the UseEffect under Global is set to false. Look at the results below (ALL mods and textures removed).

[GLOBAL]
UseEffect=false.

Notice that sky reflection on the water is only slightly darker than the sky;



[GLOBAL]
UseEffect=true.

Notice the sky is more pale; yet the reflection of the sky is more blue than previous picture. The difference in color is much more pronounced.



What do I want? Didn't you write the shaders for the ENB Series? I am willing to try and fix this myself if you are unable/unwilling to do so. However, I need to know where to begin looking. I am a decent programmer but I have a hard time deciphering the layout of the shader files since it is not clear where all the parameters come from (I don't have any experience writing shaders); It would help to know where the function(s) is/are that would affect the color of a reflection.

In order to narrow the problem down I decided to remove all effects and add them one at a time under [EFFECT]. I came across some interesting results. These are the settings that directly affected the sky to cause the problem I am reporting. (I am not entirely convinced though that these effects are the only causes).

1. I could not disable EnableSkylighting or EnableCloud Shadows. With only both of these enabled, the color of the sky was actually slightly bluer than the reflection.


2. Enabling both Mist and especially Volumetric Rays causes the sky to become significantly lighter with my current settings. This was the reason I needed to add filter colors for the sky to begin with. The color changes associated with these settings are not reflected in the water
MIST:


VOLUMETRIC RAYS:


3. Enabling water causes the image reflected on the water to become darker (at least with my current settings)


Of all these, the issue with volumetric rays is the most troubling because its drastic bleaching effect on the sky at high levels is what necessitated me using gradient color filters to begin with. Are volumetric rays supposed to affect the entire sky color?

Here are my settings:


I am guessing the SkyColor section might be part of the problem here?

EDIT: Nope... the Sky color doesn't seem to have much of an effect. I also tried clearing all the sky gradient color filters (making them white) to see what would happen. I don't think this is a sky color filter issue. I think the original simlarities were coincidental. I just think that the there is a darkening and saturation issue where blue is affected more than other colors in the water reflection for whatever reason.

Mist and volumetric rays are depth based effects, they can't be computed for water reflection, which is drawed to cubemap separately. Rays are computed as overlay for all visible depth on screen. Real world effect is already included in to blue sky, so to set colors properly in Skyrim, you need to change sky color to much more contrast blue. In case of cubemap used for water, there is no way to correct blue color to simulate volumetric rays applied, they depends from sun occluded by clouds, reflection ray have different path which is mostly looks like entire camera to sky length. The only way imho is to accept limits of game without sources. Don't even know where to start looking for bugs of reflection color, if it's not just because of rays and mist, game use simplified objects and shaders for drawing cubemap reflection and if it cut values, then i can't do anything. With default game config (and bFloatingPointRenderTarget=1) cubemap render target is hdr type and in water code i do not apply any clampling or color operation for the water, just frennel factor and self reflection intensity manipulation. Give me at least buggy enbseries.ini with rays and mist disabled, weather id and time of the day information, then if i will see this myself, dumping shader constants of main sky and sky in cubemap may do the trick to find issue.

_________________
i5-4690k, 16Gb RAM, GTX 1060 6Gb, X-Fi Titanium, Win7 x128
I am INFP, not the brutal, godamnit.

Thanks for the explanation. I now understand more about why it is difficult to properly reflect these effects. Would it be possible to add a temporary fix (or permanent one if it can't be solved) to simply add a color filter to the water reflection to tone down the blue? Otherwise I may have to do away with realistic sun rays.

EDIT: I believe you asked me at the end of the explanation for the bugged files and info about occurrence. I will post that tomorrow.

Another color filter just for water reflection (for the sky to be exact) may do the trick, but it will totally fail when cloud covered the sun or depending from weather, white or yellow sky in water is not any better than blue.

_________________
i5-4690k, 16Gb RAM, GTX 1060 6Gb, X-Fi Titanium, Win7 x128
I am INFP, not the brutal, godamnit.

Ok. What about a color filter that is only applied if the blue channel has a significantly higher value than the other 2? If you aren't interested in doing something like this it is fine. Can you steer me in the direction where I could manually change the shader to do this?

About your request. Here is the link to the file. The pictures were taken on the northern shore of the lake, across from where Lakeview Manor is built (Hearthfires) between 1pm and sunset.