You know I have some renderings i've exported out to photoshop.  I've cleaned up the little bits & pieces where places didn't render right. But i'm not sure what else can be done with photoshop to enhance the 3d rendering. 

Can someone post a few before & after screenshots or maybe provide a link to some postwork recommendations, must do's, etc? It would be much appreciated.

Zanzo

You can use filters, actions to change how it looks, change the colour depth, contrast, highlights, add layers and masks, I could go on and on, there;s just too much to say really!!
Use Brushes to add blood, stains, water effects, I could go on for hours!

There's loads of ways you could use photoshop to enhance your renders!

sometimes messing with the exposure is better than re-rendering a huge render. levels, curves, etc. the more familiar you get with the poser renderer and lighting the less you need to resort to this, however, as youll be able to compensate for just about anything simply by changing lighting, shadow, render settings in poser.

the only photoshop postwork i ever do these days is to paint in some small shadows underneath the figures feet to ground it in the background, because if you toggle the ground plane on with raytraced shadows from several light sources your rendertime skyrockets. god forbid you have complex hair and clothing trans in the scene, then it slows down rediculously.

a little trick i sometimes do for gallery renders is a quick depth of field effect. duplicate your layer with your figure, gaussian blur it. then take a soft eraser and erase all of the areas that should be in focus. mess with the upper layer opacity till you get the look you like. this helps a lot to soften the otherwise too-hard edges of 3D and is a lot easier than calculating depth of field settings in the renderer, IMO.

Totally agree with Blackhearted about the hard edges. General postwork changes from picture to picture but the only thing I do on every render with a human figure is to soften the edges. It's far more realistic & pleasing to the eye. Take a look at a photo of someone & have a look at the edges around the figure.

Just to add, I render in Vue 6 Infinite & I like DOF for added realsim & effect. However, this would take forever to do in the render so it's best to fake it in postwork.

I use photoshop for many things with renders, add my signature, enhance the lighting, combine 2 scenes into one (major editing and touch up).

I often use the Z depth mask from Vue to get a decent DOF effect in photoshop, often tweak the levels and curves and sometimes use some actions that I bought (and picked up some for free)

you can also make thumbnails, add text, cartoonize, corrupt Jedi, overthrow the Senate, and establish a Galactic Empire...usual Dark Side stuff...;)

The biggest postwork change is using Photoshop to enhance the colors in the image. I can get lights close to what I want, but I've yet to get a render that I couldn't improve using Photoshop curves to beef up colors and contrast. That's fairly clear with this image where the original render looks rather drab compared to the corrected version.

Photoshop can be used to add things that cannot be readily done in Poser, such as using a bubble brush to add air bubbles to the image.  Trying to do that in Poser would take days whereas the bubble brush only took a few minutes.

After that, Photoshop is used to correct anything else that doesn't look right. I painted over some of the morphed hair strands that were starting to look like spaghetti, pushed in the jutting right elbow and shoulder, got rid of the odd right thigh highlight added radial blurs and darkening to make the far regions look farther, and a few other things. There is only so much that Poser can do efficiently and then it's best to use a paint or photo editing program to finish it.

Some Poser artists use Poser simply as a starting point and paint on hair, clothing, backgrounds, and a variety of other things in 2D programs such that the end result barely resembles the original render.

I use both Photoshop and Painter for smoothing and fixing the rendered 3D models then also I paint in clothing, hair, anything else I think the image needs. Also I comp in pieces from my own photos to make backgrounds & add textures . I adjust lighting or change it a lot in postwork , colours too. I don't even do the Poser renders on a  high quality setting anymore,  the one for this image was a 'draft' setting though I do render largish, say 2400x2000  so it took 1 1/2 hours in Poser to set up and pose the figures, 15 minutes to render and about 6 hours in Photoshop to do this image.

I'm one of those mentioned in the above post, for me Poser is a tool mainly to set up figures..  all my fun is in the 'postwork' and mixing media  though I do certainly admire folk who use just Poser or D/S with very minimal postwork and do very realistic renders with it .... however that's just not where my personal interest lies.

You can paint!  Hair, clothes, anything.  Especially hair, I've yet to find a decent hair figure that is able to pose realistically with the head in any position except upright.   Add lighting, paint in lighting, adjust the contrast and brightness to get a better color, the list goes on.

I use PSP 6 instead of Photoshop, but it's very similar and I'm very comfortable with its interface (I don't really care for any PSP versions above 6). I used it to fake the old grainy photograph appearance in the piece called "Arthur" in my gallery. And I used it to create a simple strap for the guitar in my piece called "Rock Me". The one thing I wasn't able to do though, is create footprints in the snow for my work called "The Way Home" I'm sure if I had more patience, I could have done it though. I want to try some of the effects folks have described here, too -

My gallery is at
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/member.php

You can paint, add layer effects, change exposure...there is a LOT of stuff you can do.  I've been on a postwork kick, since I've come to terms with the fact that postword doesn't always equate to painting ;)

You can do whatever post work you want. Assemble the rendered images in a graphic program, paint things in, erase things, use plugins, blend modes...anything you want.  There are many in the gallery that render a bare image and post work everthing else (hair, clothing, props, background, shadows, lights, softened, blurred etc)

Here are some tutorials to get you started:

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=720&_m=d

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=727&_m=d

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=683&_m=d

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=762&_m=d

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=681&_m=d

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=682&_m=d

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/tutorial/-/?id=762&_m=d

http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/tutorial/0/-/

Here are some galleries where the artist typically does a great deal of post work. There are others, but these are the few that come to mind:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?username=addy

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?username=prog

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/browse.php?username=antje

Ooh, I'm gonna have to thank Arcadia for all those tutorial links. I think it's time for me to order some Thai food, and eat away while reading some tutorials.. :D Sounds like a perfectly good way to spend a Thursday.

Oh, and just to throw my bit into the mix, Photoshop is a great way of doing reflections. In many cases, the angle will need to be adjusted and such, but it's rather rewarding.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1635643&member

I bring my own Exhibit A into the mix (yeah, it's nowhere near as good as the pictures others have posted... but meh. I was just kinda amusing myself with it.

In the above picture, I made that subtle reflection with Photoshop. Just a dead-simple case of copying the character layer, flipping it upside-down, and adjusting the blending modes and opacity.

I used PSP for the spot light effects in this pic, something that poser just cant do, it added the right light to the pic to make it work

ok its 4 years old now and done on poser 4 or 5 i think.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=819650

You can see my contribution to postwork here.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1008269

This was done before I understood lights. So I used the default ones that come with Poser and added the rest of the lights, shadow and glow in Paint Shop Pro v7.04.  I gave a highlight of how I achieved it in the comments area.

In my opinion postwork can change a mediocre render into an amazing piece of art.
I have been using photoshop at work and at home for the last 15 years, and I would feel empty without using it at some point.

While I understand the believe people have here at Rendo that you should do as much as possible within the render, I think it can be incredibily time consuming.

Learning an image editing package will come useful, you will come up with shortcuts that may reduce your workflow inmensely, and may be able to do things that within the render would have been complicated or my have been had to pay for (textures, shaders, etc.)
Also you may be able to add some personal touches to your renders, such as editing textures, etc.

I use (at basic levels) Paint Shop Pro 9 because we have it installed at work. I never learned Photoshop, and I wonder if to achieve the best results with Poser postwork I should improve my PSP knowledge or learn PS. In other words, are they equivalent or not?

Giorgio

Giorgio, I have used Corel Photo paint and Paintshop pro in the past.
I did like Paintshop, not sure about the latest version but at the time it had almost the same tools as photoshop, and for the price it was a real bargain. I just stuck with photoshop mainly because is one of my daily working tools, so I am very comfortable with it.

Learning to use any image editing software well will give you good generic skills that you can port to any specific application anyway.

Quote - I use (at basic levels) Paint Shop Pro 9 because we have it installed at work. I never learned Photoshop, and I wonder if to achieve the best results with Poser postwork I should improve my PSP knowledge or learn PS. In other words, are they equivalent or not?

Giorgio

Paint Shop Pro can do about 90% of what Photoshop can.  And Paint Shop Pro can use Adobe compatable  filters too.  And the nice thing about Paint Shop Pro is that it's way less expensive than Photoshop, and is more user friendly.

I know every nook and cranny about Paint Shop Pro 7.04 and 8.1 and there isn't much of anything that I can't do in there. I also have Photoshop CS and I just can't wrap my head around the backwards way of doing things in it.  The only thing I use my Photoshop for is to apply brushes. I work in Paint Shop Pro, save the file in .psd format, go into Photoshop and add some brushes, resave the file in .psd format and then carry on again in Paint Shop Pro.