Photoshop Post-processing Master 3d Renders - Tutorial

My name is Viktor Fretyán and I work as an architectural visualization artist here in Hungary. I recently had the chance to work on the renders of a house by Satoshi Okada and although the final results were not that amazing (i had about 2 weeks for 9 images) after the deadline i decided to go on with the project and make a series of renders out of it that would appeal to me. this personal project of mine took nearly 3 months but the end result turned out to be quite satisfying. Post process: As you can see the original render is a bit far from the final result yet. In my work photoshopping is at least as important as the rendering part.

The first thing to do with the original render is some adjustments: some parts of the image remained dark while some are a bit burnt. To even things out I select a region and press ctrl+J. This will make a copy of that region on which I used exposure adjustments and shadow, highlights. When it looks okay I blend it in the original by using eraser tool on the edges of this region (hardness on 0).

After the image feels balanced (no black nor burnt areas) comes color balancing: first thing to do here is to make the image a bit brighter. I go to exposure control again and set the gamma to around 1-1,5. This will make the image really bright and will spoil the contrast. But believe me it will work! Press

ctrl+B now. Color balancing comes up. I used the following settings to set the right color tones:

These exact settings can't just be applied to any other image expecting to achieve the same result but the basic idea is to set the darker tones to the warmer colors and the midtones to the blueish color tone. Here's the final result after I was done with the adjustments:

Next step for me was to give the concrete some dirt. I could have done this in max but I found this method much easier. This is how I made it: first I found a proper texture at cgtextures.com (every texture I use is from that site). I copy paste it in the psd I was working in and set the layer to overlay instead of normal. By pressing ctrl+T I could adjust it correctly onto the walls. I also used erase tool a lot here and set the opacity to 50 percent. Here is the dirt layer:

And here it is applied on the render:

At this point I flattened the image.

Now comes zdepth: I used this for depth of field effect. First thing was to use color-select tool to select the black areas on the zdepth layer and then swhitch back to the flattened image and press ctrl+J. Now I turned the lightness a bit higher (press ctrl+u) and set the midtones to cyan-blue. This gave our scene a bit depth already by dividing the background and the forground. After this I added some gaussian blur to the zdepth map 2.0

Then I selected the whiter tones (color select again) and pressed ctr+J again on the render layer and added some lens blur on it (only the slightest!). I went to zdepth layer again and used color-select again but now on a smaller value. Ctrl+J (again) on the render layer and some lens blur (again...) on it (this time a bit stronger) and moved this layer to the top. I repeated this last move some more times but with smaller color-select value and higher lens blur.

This method for lens blur is a bit lame I know but I have tried several and this in the end nothing worked out perfectly. Last thing to add here is the glowing effect of the sky through the leaves. For this I have used color select tool again on the white color then ctrl+J and then a very small gaussian blur (around 0,5-1,0 or even lower!) and duplicating this layer a lot of times. Then merging these layers and using erase tool on some parts of it and then it is set. Here is the result so far:

In the last part I flattened the image once more and added some effects using different plugins. First one was Knoll Light Factory. It is a great plug-in! I recommend everyone to get it. I used it to create the lights in the sky. The one on the left is pretty obvious. It is a warm light for the sun. But I have another one on the right side of the building that has a magenta color.

Next one is chromatic aberration done by 55mm Film Tool. Now-a-days everyone is familiar with this effect but I find that most people don't seem to get it right. It is an effect that can be really

annoying if you abuse it. I say if it is clearly visible it is already wrong! It's a matter of testing and finding the right balance. Here is my attempt:

Next one is vignetting also by 55mm Film Tool. First I duplicate the layer to be able to modify it later like erasing it from some parts wich I did in the top right corner of the image.

Last is the film grain for which I have used NIK color effects film effect tool. It is on a separate layer which the opacity is set a bit lower (around 50-70 percent).

And here we are! We've come a long way! Check it out: