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Description
A quick sample of postwork in action... in this case between a scene rendered with a single light vs. a scene rendered with global lighting . (both images by a friend of mine, ).

One of the trickiest parts of rendering is lighting. The lighting can completely change the mood of the scene, it can hide unwanted defects or expose them as well. Unfortunately, lighting is also the costliest part of a render (in terms of rendering time). The higher quality of lighting, the longer the render takes (and I've had images take whole days to render because of lighting!).

What I've done in this image (and this is in no way a critique of original shots!!) is demonstrated how an almost insignificant amount of postwork can boost an image, or in this case two of them.

The background layer for this image is the scene lighted with Global Lighting. Notice how in the original image the shadows are soft, which exposes detail which is completely lost in the single light image.

I then added a 2nd layer, which was the single light image. With this image, I set the blend mode to Dodge with about 50% transparency. The result? Increased highlights and a bit more contrast in the image overall.

Description
A quick sample of postwork in action... in this case between a scene rendered with a single light vs. a scene rendered with global lighting . (both images by a friend of mine, ).

One of the trickiest parts of rendering is lighting. The lighting can completely change the mood of the scene, it can hide unwanted defects or expose them as well. Unfortunately, lighting is also the costliest part of a render (in terms of rendering time). The higher quality of lighting, the longer the render takes (and I've had images take whole days to render because of lighting!).

What I've done in this image (and this is in no way a critique of original shots!!) is demonstrated how an almost insignificant amount of postwork can boost an image, or in this case two of them.

The background layer for this image is the scene lighted with Global Lighting. Notice how in the original image the shadows are soft, which exposes detail which is completely lost in the single light image.

I then added a 2nd layer, which was the single light image. With this image, I set the blend mode to Dodge with about 50% transparency. The result? Increased highlights and a bit more contrast in the image overall.