This tutorial introduces techniques of night rendering in Photoshop. These techniques can be combined with Rhino night rendering techniques in order to come up with the best effect of night rendering for presentation (Rhino night rendering techniques are not included in this tutorial). The architecture model in this tutorial is Winton Guest House.
1.Set up the background
1.1 Open the background image, and make a copy. Add a level to the copied background layer and adjust the level to make increase brightness and contrast of the background. Use magic wand to select the sky, and save the selection as background 1(the selection may bot be precise at this time). Use the polygon tool to select the sky again, this time crop out the building precisely (trees will not be crop out at this time). Load the previous selection background 1, and subtract current selection from the selection background 1. In this way, we get the precise selection of the sky (precise building edges and trees boundaries).
1.2 Download a night sky background, and copy it to a new layer named as sky. Adjust the scale and location of the sky image to fit it into the whole context.
2. Building and context lightness adjustment
2.1 Add levels and hue/saturation to the background layer. Adjust them to make the buildings and other context darker to fit into the night environment.
2.2 If we want to make part area on the building brighter, we can select the area by polygon tool. Then use the brush tool to hid part of the level and hue/saturation effect (adjust the size of the brush, turn hardness down to 0, then use black color to brush on the mask layers, in this way the area are brushed the mask effect will be hidden, make sure to brush all mask layers).
3. Enhance brightness of different light sources
3.1 For the light coming from the windows, use polygon tool to select target window areas, and save the selection as window (for complete selection, saving the selection is always a good habit). Then apply the black color to these areas for all mask layers, so these parts of the mask effect will be hidden. Thus, the lights are brighter an stand out from the windows.
3.2 To make a different lighting condition from a specific window, use polygon tool to select the window area and copy it to a new layer named as window. Add levels and hue/saturation mask layers and adjust the color, brightness, and contrast of the light (in the example, this window are set to a brighter green color light).
3.3 For the street lights, download a street light fixture and copy it to a new layer named as street light. Copy the layers in order to make a series of street lights, and put all these layers in a group named as light. To adjust the light fixtures, merge all the street lights layers. Then add levels and hue/saturation mask layers to the merged street light layer. Adjust the mask layers to let the light fixtures fit into the context. In order to let the light brighter, we can also apply the brush techniques to the mask layers here. We can also add a new light bulb layer and brush the bright color on top of the light fixtures. Then overlay this layer to enhance the street lights effect. By applying the brush technique again on the background layer we can make street lights “project” to the surrounding environment, and make shadows of the light fixtures (black color is to hid the mask effect, while white color is to show the mask effect again).
4. Add people and mask effect
4.1 Download a person and copy it to a new layer people under a group also named as people. Add and adjust mask layers to let the person fit into the context. Brush part of the mask effect off to show the lighting condition on the person’s body from the street light.
4.2 To add the shadow to the person, copy the person to a new layer and rotate the shadow object, then adjust the scale of it. Turn down the lightness in hue/saturation panel to make the shadow black, then adjust opacity of the shadow.
5. Add weather (rain) condition and effect
5.1 Add a new rain layer and apply grey color on it. Under filter panel, in noise options, add noise to the rain layer (choose gaussian over uniform). Then under filter panel, blur options, open motion blur option. Adjust distance and angle of the effect, so this effect will be the rain effect on the rendering.
5.2 Set the rain layer mode from normal to hard light, and then adjust the opacity of it. In this way the rain effect will blend into the whole rendering context more naturally.
