How can I add hightlights, in post-work? I saw various artist with this effect, and wanted to try and gice it a try.

Attached Link: http://www.creativedust.com

I use the color dodge tool in Photoshop to add highlights. Here is a link to a very good tutorial by picky, here she covers a lot of fantastic stuff for post production. www.creativedust.com

i generally make a second layer in photoshop, and paint in highlights with a white airbrush. then i use the eraser tool with a soft airbrush set at low opacity to fade the highlights. gaussian blur on the highlight layer works well too. you can build up highlight layers if you want better results, just keep repeating this process over and over. my gladiator image had about 8-10 highlight and blood/shadow layers. if you build them up, rather than having them all on one layer, then you can click them on and off (visible and invisible) and see exactly how they affect the image. you can also edit different parts of it without damaging previous work. cheers, -gabriel

Using layers is very important. I use the color dodge and burn tool to keep the color the same, just highlight or darken. Also, highlights and shadows can be done using Overlay Layers. When just adding highlights, I try not to spray any color to avoid changing the original color.

Here is a quick example I wipped up. Just used the Color Dodge Tool set to Highlights. You can see here the great difference from the plain Poser render.

I use a method that is a little different and maybe not very intuitive but gives good results. In Photoshop, duplicate the layer that contains your image, placing the copy on top of the original. Set the new layer's blending mode to "Screen". Add a layer mask to this new layer, setting it to "Hide All". Use an airbrush set to about 5-10% and paint on the layer mask with white to paint in the highlights, paint with black to reduce them if you need to. If you can't get enough lightening with one screening layer, add a second or third one, then merge them together prior to masking. I do the reverse, creating a duplicate layer set to the Multiply mode, to increase saturation in a light image as needed.

Whoa, Gromit. i haven't seen that one before, nice idea! A few stray additions to the suggestions... i believe Picky's tutorial--or someone's--said to never use dodge or burn at more than about 15% opacity or you get funky results. Very true! Xurge--if that were my render, i'd go back and redo the lighting and re-render, because it's much less work. :^) Over-dodging or -burning will lose the detail in the highlights or shadows--not good, usually. i think i would have used Levels on that one before i started in with the painting tools. Another rule of thumb for Photoshop and post-render touchups--make the software do as much of the work as possible, only paint in when you absolutely have to, and only at the last. For things like mesh breaks--well, we're all SOL there. Must paint them up or better, use the Stamp tool to retouch.

I don't have an example handy of using the technique I mentioned above for creating highlights, but here's an example of doing the reverse - selectively adding saturation using a Multiply layer.

The top image is the original washed-out photo. In the bottom image I first adjusted the color balance, then created four copies of the background layer, set their blending mode to Multiply, merged them all together and added a layer mask. Then I airbrushed the mask to add saturation to areas of her face.

Admittedly this is not a great example! The original is badly washed out and you can't enhance something that is not there.

Gromit

Color me impressed, Gromit. You didn't lose any of the detail in the hair, either, while managing to rescue quite a lot of it in her face. Nice going.