1. Toning the Grass

I am first showing the the grass before it was darkened. The grass is made up of four or five different textures and toned to have a similar desaturated grayish green. Once I had the textures stitched together, I needed to darken the grass significantly. I did this in two steps. First, I adjusted the levels to punch up the contrast and to deepen the shadows. In some cases, the darker parts of the grass started to lose some of the detail in the shadows.

Next, I wanted to evenly darken the grass while giving it a subtle blue tint. My favorite way to do this is by creating a new layer, painting it a dark blue, and setting the Layer Blend Mode to “Multiply”.

2. Additional Details

I added in lots of trees and a stream cutting across the image. In both cases, they are either shifting really dark or really light continuing the extreme contrast. For the water, I setup a mask and simply flipped the sky so that the water reflected the exact same tones.

3. Final Adjustments

Now that I have the base image where I want it, I can begin setting up the final color adjustments. Up until this point, the toning was happening on an elemental basis meaning I was toning the trees, grass, building, and sky separately. These next round of adjustments will be happening at the top of the layer stack and effecting the entire image.
I first wanted to lightly wash the image and push the pure black shadows to something a little more blue in tone. I did this by creating a layer, painting it a dark blue, and setting the Layer Blend Mode to “Screen”. I then tweaked the opacity of the layer to reduce the strength of the effect.

Next, I copied that same blue layer, but this time, set the Layer Blend Mode to “Lighten”. The change is subtle and both “Screen” and “Lighten” are softening the shadows of the image. The difference is “Lighten” effects only the darkest parts of the image whereas “Screen” is effecting both the dark and light parts of the image.

I wanted to move away from the grass feeling too green, so I next adjusted the “Color Balance”. With the “Color Balance” dialogue box open, I first selected the “Highlights” in the “Tone” drop-down menu. I pushed the highlights of the image to a cooler blue tone by moving the “Cyan” slider to the left. I then chose the “Shadows” in the “Tone” drop-down menu. With the shadows, I didn’t want to lose all of the warmth, so I stayed in the purple ranges by pushing the “Cyan” and “Yellow” sliders to the right. I should point out this took some testing and experimenting before arriving at to these final settings.

Finally, the transition from the hill to the sky was a little to harsh, so I painted in some haze that focused on the horizon, and softly washing the entire image.

Final Image

Over the years, I have seen many different techniques to add fog. Sketchup has the ability to add and export fog. Most rendering programs can render fog as well. I go the really simple route. I just paint it in using Photoshop. It may not be the most accurate technique, but it is fast and very easy to tweak and adjust.

To add fog, I first create a new layer and move it to the top of the layers palette. I then select the “Brush Tool”, choose a white paint color, select a soft brush at the top, and lower the opacity to somewhere around 10%. From there, I simply paint in fog with a higher density in the horizon fading away as it gets closer to the viewer. You can also see this done in one of my older videos HERE.

Below, I have uploaded some before and after shots of my old thesis renderings.

I posted a landscape video tutorial a few weeks back, however the video did not cover some final post processing steps used for the final look. I received some comments asking for an explanation so I thought I would put something together quickly. The steps are basic and better explanations can be found under the quick tips section of the TUTORIALS PAGE.

At the end of the landscape video tutorial, the image was looking good (Below), however there were a few subtle details that I still wanted to adjust.

1) First, I found an image of people at the correct camera angle. I quickly cut them out by erasing the background with the eraser tool.

2) The cutouts were dragged into the illustration and scaled to the correct size. I also painted in a soft shadow to set them into the image. Another tip is to desaturate the people about 50% so that bright color clothing doesn’t become too distracting. It also allows people taken from different images to look better next to one another.

4) Double check that the orange layer is at the top, and set the blend mode to “Overlay”. I like to give my illustrations color overlays because it helps to tie all of the different Photoshopped elements together, especially in an illustration like this with different trees and grasses. A more detailed description of color overlays can be found HERE.

5) Finally, I want to add just a little grunge effect. Find a good grunge texture and move it to the top of the layers pallet. The one I used has an orange hue to it which will strengthen the orange in the previous step which Im fine with. If I wanted, I could desaturate the texture to avoid the added orange color and just utilize the texture.

 6) Set the new grunge layer to “Overlay” and lower the opacity. A more detailed explanation of the step can be found HERE.

I’ve realized that some of the biggest moves I make with architectural illustrations happen in the last few seconds of post processing. The mood can be completely flipped with just a few color overlays. A have saved a lot of weak renderings with these simple steps.

I received a lot of feedback and emails from people after posting the “Honduras Illustration part 2” asking for a tutorial on adding light rays. I put together this video explaining how this was done. You will will realize that there’s not much to them and the process of adding them is pretty painless.

Before (below)

After adding the light rays (below)

As always, I appreciate the feedback

This illustration was a part of a series of illustrations that I created for a project at Paul Lukez Architecture.

As I get more into photography,  I find more and more things that overlap into architecture illustrations. One thing that I never thought about in school when creating illustrations was the idea of avoiding converging vertical lines. Obviously, this isn’t the case for all views and illustrations, but there are times when making this adjustment can add a bit of realism and clarity to the composition. It’s a common tweak used in architectural photography and I find myself applying it to my illustrations more often.

Below, I have shown the original illustration with guides showing how the vertical lines angle inward and would eventually converge if they were to be extended.

If your using Sketchup, there is a setting that can be change to get the vertical elements straight up and down. Just choose “Camera” at the top of the UI and select “two-point perspective”.

Sometimes, the adjustment needs to be made after things have been rendered and post processed. The easiest way I have found to do this in Photoshop is as follows:

1. To unlock the background layer, right click on the layer and choose “Layer from Background”. You could also duplicate the layer that way you keep the original.

2. If your rulers are not turned on, go to “view” and select “Rulers”. Click on the rulers with the move tool and Drag to the right to create guides. These will act as a reference to align the image verticals to.

3. Choose “Edit” at the top and select “Transform> Perspective”.

4. Click the grips in the corners and drag until the vertical elements in the image are parallel with the guides.

Pretty simple. Now the image is less distorted and probably more accurate to what it would look like if you where looking at the real thing.

If your wondering how this illustration was constructed,

The “CLAY MODEL TUTORIAL” was used for the base image

The “PHOTOSHOP GRASS TUTORIAL” was used for the grass

I also used the “GRUNGE TUTORIAL”  and the ” COLOR OVERLAY TUTORIAL”.

As with many of the other tips in this series, this tutorial adds a last minute “kick” to an architectural illustration. What is nice about this process is that the contrast is increased, but at the same time, the sharpness is decreased providing an interesting final outcome.

Begin by opening the image in Photoshop. The original image that I will be using is below.

Right click on the image layer and choose “Duplicate.”

Next, select Filters>Blur>Guassian Blur.

The amount of blur is dependent on the size of the image and your own preference.

Once the blur is applied, set the layer blend mode to “Overlay.”

Adjust the opacity of the layer if the effect is too strong.