A mod decided to corrupt my game data so it crashed every time so I had to remove the game and re-install. I added the HD texture DLC just as I did before but now, for some reason everything is darkened. If I change the prefs to add a higher gamma setting, the darkened places look blocky and lacking texture like a very dark jpg photo that has been brightened too much. Before this crash, I had it so day and night weren't much different and I could see detail in every room in places like Proudspire Mansion and it was a nice house. Now, it just seem dark and dingy, not the sort of place I'd want to live in.

As far as I know, I have done nothing different this time than I did before so I can't understand why this has happened. TBH, I have seen better graphics on a 640x480 DOS based game than this is giving me now.

Can anyone enlighten me as to why this might be happening? I must have missed something but for the life of me, I can't figure out what.

Well that's strange, try verifying the game's cache in Steam which will resolve any corrupted files.

Also try running without the HD Texture Pack and see if that helps.

Also again lol, go into My Document/MyGames/Skyrim and delete Skyrim.ini and SkyrimPrefs.ini this will force the game to reset it's settings.

And check the Data folder for any rogue INI files that you may have missed.

Found it, thanks for pointing me to that.

Something, probably one of the mods I added had installed a "realistic Lighting" update into the game. I removed the 4 offending files with that name and deleted the skyrimprefs.ini file and it's fine now.