Rendering Critique

[George Godwin]

Jim, - I use a lot of tools and I select certain areas for specific treatment. Some of the key tools are Image/Adjustments/Levels and Image/Adjustments/Hue Saturation Lightness.

Levels allows adjustment of bright, medium or darker tone levels. It is more versatile and refined than the Brightness/Contrast adjustment. Saturation allows colours to be richer (saturated) or, in the alternative, desaturated for the effect Anders shows. Hue allows colour shifts and Lightness speaks for itself.

I also use a lot of Layer Blending modes like Multiply, Colour, Overlay, and sometimes Screen for specific areas and I use a lot of Layer Masking to deal with specific items. These are the main tools.

To get the outdoors to show through the screening material over the windows I copied the upper portion of the outdoors onto its own Layer, moved it over the screens and used Edit/Transform/Distort to adjust the shape and opacity with a mask for finer adjustments. Opacity adjustments are used a lot on layers together with Layer Masks.

I added grey to the glass upper cabinet door and simulated shelves (lines with blurring) as well as grey to the fridge. A Gradient Fill on the fridge might have been more realistic with masking and using a blending mode.

I use the Filter/Blur tools to blur the edges of the shadows and the highlights and any shortfall of the anti-aliasing to smooth sharp or provocative edges where needed.

Once you have the colour and light/shadow tones close to what you think looks real (if not a little rich in colour saturation) you can adjust the overall image with a little Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask and perhaps a delicate tweak of the Image/Adjustments/Brightness/Contrast to taste. You can pour a glass of wine at this point and survey your results.

In the end, you have to review your image carefully to see if the colours look real (if not a tad rich or saturated), check for sharp edges that should be softened with Blur, and assess whether the tonal range of lighting and colour overall is realistic and as 'even' as desired.

Interior renders in Chief often have large shifts in brightness over the lighting range that have to be compensated for by various adjustments. Strong local lighting tends to wash out colours and make them too bright. The shadow areas in turn are too dark and detail is lost. Most of these items can be successfully adjusted in an image program.