Architectural Viz_ Rendering in Photoshop

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Architectural Viz: Rendering in Photoshop

Posted on November 17, 2012 | 4 Comments

4 Votes

Need to present a design idea to yo ur client/professor tomo rrow? Whether you’re doing architectural,

product, or conc ept work this rendering technique is sure to get your idea noticed.

Y ou may hav e seen my earlier post abo ut c ompositing images inside of Pho tosho p to create a

rendering. This is a tutorial that outlines this process so y ou can apply some o f the techniques to y our

own work.

What you will need:

Photoshop…hence the title

A simple image o f your building; the sample image was rende red using V -ray . The v-ray rendering

engine is available for sketch-up, Rhino 3D, Maya, 3D Max, e tc. and is a v ery quick and effectiv e

engine to render with.

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Photos of some landscape e lements; for the purpo ses of my project the building is set in an open

field. Y ou can use a c ity street, o cean, etc . Each projec t will be different in this regard.

Photos of background elements, same rules apply. I generally use buildings, mountains, or

whatever relates to the c ontext of the image.

Photos of clouds; whateve r fits the mood y ou are aiming for.

General entourage (plants, people, etc .)

Now with all those elements in a nice new folder start a new Photoshop projec t and drag them onto y ourcanv as. It will look something like the image below with more or less elements…not v ery ex citing yet.

note: I did no t include a few elements seen in the sample image; this was done for time sake since the

method I will be demonstrating can be applied to any ob jects and there is no need to be re dundant.

I didn’t like those two guy s running after the frisbee any way; who threw that frisbee?

Layout

This is the v ery first stage of making these very disconnected pictures into one image. Y ou will basically

be arranging your images in such a way that they work to gether or te ll a story . Every one lo ves a good

story.

This can start as a sketch on paper but I’m spontaneous (and lazy) so I just mov e the images around

inside photosho p until they loo k nice. The most important aspect of this phase is really the perspe ctive.

The elements should all match a similar vantage po int as the base rendering yo u are using for yo ur


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project. In this case the base rendering is from a low human eye perspec tive so all the photographic

elements match this view. The grass would look out o f place if it was pictured from abov e and the other

elements were being viewed v anishing into the distance. The end lay out will look something like the

image below.

note: Some images will have to be duplicated to fit your c anvas. This is easy with materials such as grass

or sky since it looks very random and helps blend the copied image. Duplicate any layers accordingly;

in this case the buildings and grass were duplicated.

Cleaning Up the Elemen ts

Now it’s time to clean up the edges of our little photoshop collage. Using the polygo nal lasso too l, trim

the base o ff of yo ur building so that the bo ttom appears to be sitting right on top of the field of grass.


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The red line represents the general path of your lasso selection; yo u can just delete this selection. Next

we will be trimming the horizo n of buildings. Notice that the sky above the buildings do es not match our

clouds, we will need to get rid o f this. Use the eraser tool with the hardness and flow settings dialeddown. Hardness can be zer o and flow around 7 %. (Found in the top bar and brush settings)

Just gently erase the edge until only the building edges remain.

Dodge and Burn

Now ev ery thing is beginning to look a little more integrated but it’s not quite there. We will be using the

Burn and Dodge to ol to suggest lighting in the scene. These too ls should be set to midtones in the top

tool bar nex t to the brush settings. The dodge too l can be used to lighten up pixels and the burn tool can

be used to darken pix els; so naturally you ’ll want to brush according to the sunny and shaded areas of

your rendering. This proc ess can be lo ose and v ery fun, so don’t worry about it being perfect unless y ou

have a v ery specific effect in mind. Apply this to all elements until you hav e some sense o f lighting. In


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my case the lighting is a bright sun coming from behind camera somewhere . This will take yo ur own

artistic merit so do whatev er sets the mood o f the piece.

Y ou sho uld also take a mo ment to lightly erase litt le b its o f the base of the building and any thing in

direct c ontact with the grass. This gives the illusion that the image is actually nested into the grass in

reality. This definitely gives a gro unded (no pun intended) feeling to the ov erall picture. Try to use a

grass shaped brush for the eraser too l. There is a stock one that co mes with photoshop and can be found

in the brush selection (top left hand corner).

Blending th e Colors

Now we are going to use an adjustment tool c alled Selec tiv e Color; this can be found in

Image/A djustments/Selective Color. By default it is set to adjust the red tones but if you o pen the

dropdown menu y ou will see other o ptions. The most drastic c hanges can be found when adjusting the

White/ Neutral/Black settings. Tweak these colors for each lay er unt il y our images have a more relativ e

colo r scheme. For instance y ou might choo se to make every thing a bit more green and warm because

the scene is outdoo rs surrounded by grass. This step really brings some nice blending and drama to the

rendering.

The second really important colo r adjustment is to create a new fill layer, with a gradient. This is found

in the Lay ers/Fill Layers/Gradient menu. In my c ase I will do a gradient that starts as a nice blue from

the sky and fades to a warm orange to wards the ground. (diagonally so it seems more naturally, stay

away from any thing to straight or rigid)


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This will look extremely ov erpowering at first but if y ou change the Blend Mode of the gradient layer it

will fix that. I n the upper left hand cor ner of the lay ers panel change the gradient layer from Normal to

Soft Light . Now the gradient will blend more appro priately with the scene. This can be made more

subtle by adjusting the opacity of the layer.

Finishing Tou ches


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Now the image is looking a lot better. We just need to add some o verall punch to the e lements. This can

be done in v arious way s but in this tutorial we are going to use highlights. Create a new lay er and using

white, simply put so me small blobs of white where the sun light is hitting the building the hardest. In my

case it is towards the top. This creates the illusion of glare from the sun’s rays.

Keep this layer selected and go to Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur. Turn the blur up until the white blobs

begin to feather and look muc h mo re like bright highlights fro m the sun. This can also be do ne o n trees,

cars or any additional elements that you’d like to dr aw attention to.

In this tutorial we have cov ered how to montage v arious photos into one cohesive render and add some

punch to the overall picture. Y ou can use these techniques for a variety o f elements and circumstances.

For project spec ific examples of co mpositing landscape, water, roads, etc. subscribe to the blog and

watch for new tutorials. I will be covering mor e detail spec ific examples for these ele ments in the ne ar

future.

Have any c omments or question? Post below or send a message from the about page and I’d be happy to

chat. Hope y ou found something here that will be useful in y our own wor k. Until next time, Cheers!


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This entry was posted in A rchitecture and tagged architecture, co ncept art, design, digital art,

landscape, Photoshop, rendering. Bookmark the permalink.

Trick Photography Book | November 23, 2012 at 1:44 pm | Reply

Y our sty le is unique c ompar ed to other folks I

have read stuff from. Thank you for posting when you’v e got the o pportunity, Guess I’ll just bo ok mark this s ite.

John-Michael Wilyat | November 24, 2012 at 4:38 am | Reply

Follow the blog from the homepage (top right) to receiv e all tutorial updates by email.

Thanks for reading!

david | February 3, 2013 at 6:29 pm | Reply

can y ou give me y our rendering of the building? i want learn to do this render sty le. thanks

Ryan Dempster | March 9, 2013 at 11:27 pm | Reply

Fantastic tutorial, made, what could have been drawn out and complicated, very simple and

digestible. Thank you v ery muc h.
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