When your Sims play an instrument, or chat in a way that builds Charisma or Comedy skill, or play chess and build the Logic skill, a massive array of sparkles, plus signs, lightbulbs, and all kinds of visual clutter gather around their heads and it literally ruins all of my screenshots/screengrabs. I've tried using "headlineeffects OFF" but it doesn't remove these effects, only the plumbob and skill meter, but not those skill gain visual effects. I tried pressing "tab" to hide the UI for screenshots but it doesn't hide the skill gain effects. There's a setting for visual effects, but it only goes from "Low" to "High" and low only means that the effects are smaller in resolution, but not completely gone (however they did briefly vanish when I first toggled the effects to "low", but they immediately came right back, just smaller in size).

Is there any mod out there that removes these? Or does anyone know what I'd have to edit within the files to remove these myself?

There's a small one by Lotharihoe here and two more extensive ones by NV. (No Effects + No Overhead Effects) here.

If there are other icons these don't cover, you can usually find the original images in S4S and replace them with blanks.

You're a lifesaver, thank you!