Community
- Join my discord server for questions, suggestions and development updates
- You can also donate if you would like to say thanks
Frequently asked questions
"When will Photon be released for new Minecraft version?"
- Shader packs are generally not very dependent on MC versions; as long as Iris is available, Photon should just work.
Features
- Fully revamped sky, lighting and water
- Detailed clouds with several layers and many different cloud types
- Immersive weather system providing different skies each day
- Voxel-based colored lighting (enabled with Ultra profile, requires Iris)
- Screen-space reflections
- Volumetric fog
- Soft shadows with variable-size penumbras
- Detailed ambient occlusion (GTAO)
- Camera effects: bloom, depth of field, motion blur
- Much improved image quality with TAA, FXAA and CAS
- Advanced temporal upscaling (disabled by default) for low end devices
- Extensive settings menu allowing you to customize every aspect of the shader
- Full labPBR resource pack support
Compatibility
Shader loaders
- Iris (recommended)
- Iris is a modern shader loader with far better performance, mod compatibility and developer features than OptiFine
- Some features (Colored Lighting) will only work on Iris
- OptiFine
GPU vendors
- Nvidia
- AMD
- Intel
- NOT compatible with Apple GPUs (Metal) by default
- Disable SH Skylight and Colored Shadows
Mods
Acknowledgments
- Settings menu translations: NakiriRuri and OrzMiku (Chinese), Jmayk (Italian), Timtaran (Russian)
- Emin - Shadow bias method from Complementary Reimagined (fully fixes peter panning and light leaking underground!)
- DrDesten - Depth tolerance calculation for SSR (helps to prevent false reflections)
- Jessie - f0 and f82 values for labPBR hardcoded metals
- Sledgehammer Games - Bloom downsampling method used in Call of Duty Advanced Warfare (described here)
- http://momentsingraphics.de/ - Blue noise texture
- NASA Scientific Visualization Studio - Galaxy image
Quick facts
- Edition: Minecraft Java
- File type: .zip (resource pack)
- Minecraft versions listed: 1.20.2, 1.21, 1.20.5
- How to install: Download the .zip resource pack — do not unzip it. → Put it in .minecraft/resourcepacks. → Enable it in Options → Resource Packs.
- Where to get it: Opens on CurseForge — not every file is mirrored on our own servers.
Install steps are the general flow for this file type — see the MC Java Mods guides for the full walkthrough.
Photon Shader is a free Minecraft Java shader. Compatible with Minecraft 1.20.2, 1.21, 1.20.5, 1.21.5 and newer. Downloaded 8,231,030 times (via CurseForge). Download it and open it directly in the game.