At the present, it is not possible to preview armor shaders in Destiny, so players purchasing them from the store will have almost no idea what they look like apart from the basic colors that show up in the icon.
Fortunately, you can preview all of the shaders to see how they’ll look on any of your characters thanks to a website that lets you preview any of the available shaders by actually applying them to your characters. You won’t have to spend any Glimmer whatsoever on these shaders to know how they look.
Simply head over to the Destiny Tracker website, and enter your Xbox or PlayStation ID to proceed. You won’t have to enter your password or disclose any of your private information to the website to check out what your character looks like with one of the applied shaders in the game.
Here’s my character with the Blacksmith legendary shader, which applies a coat of camouflage in its paintjob.