February 2, 2015 at 11:47Visualization of architectural lighting
- Tutorial
A simple method described at the LiDS lighting design school that allows you to make it look evening and create architectural lighting from a daytime photograph of the building. This method of visualization is used by architectural students for their work, but it can be used by anyone who wants to come up with lighting, for example, for their summer house.
1) We take a photo of the building in the afternoon in cloudy weather, when there are no sharp shadows, but there is enough light for the camera to make a good picture.
2) Select the sky with a “magic wand”, create a new layer and fill the selection with solid color. Now, having deselected, it can be returned at any time by holding Ctrl and clicking on the icon of the layer with the red field.
3) Drop any suitable sky onto the picture, and invert the prepared selection (Select> Inverse) and remove the unnecessary from the sky layer.
And the new sky falls into place.
4) Create a copy of the theater layer and create twilight, reducing the lightness of the layer (Image> Adjustments> Hue / Saturation) to "-60".
5) With a magic wand, select the windows in some windows and remove them from the layer with the twilight theater. “Daylight” windows become visible under the removal, which enlivens the picture and makes the building even more twilight in contrast to its bright windows.
6) In order for the building to acquire an evening color, we create a gradient from the dark blue of the sky to the red lighting with sodium lamps.
7) And apply this gradient to a new layer on top of others
9) Change the blend mode of the layer with the gradient from “normal” to “overlay”. If the effect seems too harsh, you can reduce the transparency of the layer, making it less than 100% to taste. And then the building plunged into the evening city darkness.
10) Create a reflection of the columns on the marble around the fountain. To do this, duplicate the layer with the building (Layer> Duplicate Layer), press Ctrl + T, flip and squeeze the layer so that the reflection of the columns goes where you need it.
Press "Enter", accepting the transformation of the layer. Using a soft rubber band, delete everything except the columns from it and change the layer blending mode from “normal” to “overlay”. Voila - the reflection of the columns of the building appeared in marble under the fountain. To make the reflection less cartoonish and more realistic, you can whiten the entire reflection layer a little (Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur) and reduce the transparency of the layer if desired.
11) Now let's turn on the lights. To do this, create a new layer.
Change the blending mode of the layer from “normal” to “overlay”, and now everything that we paint with a white color on this layer with a brush will become light.
And if we double-click on the layer’s icon, check the “Color Overlay” checkbox in its properties, select a warm color shade and “Overlay” blending mode ...
... the lights will become much more expressive:
12) Erase the trial light zigzag, and draw the actual light. Let's start with the columns - selecting the column with a magic wand and shading the selection borders (Select> Modify> Feather), draw a light from white to transparent that goes from the bottom up.
13) Holding Shift + Alt and clinging with an arrow to this light, transfer it to all other columns. So in a few seconds we will multiply typical lighting to other elements of the building.
14) By adjusting the transparency and hardness of the brush, draw white light on the illuminating layer of the rest of the light in accordance with the concept. For more realism, you need to leave shadows under the trees and add light on the sidewalks from street lamps - this light should not be uniform.
And to make the lights softer and more natural, apply a small Blair to the entire backlight layer (Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur).
15) The visualization is almost ready, but I could not resist and applied HDRToning to it (Image> Adjustments> HDRToning).
Result:
In the same way, you can virtually highlight any architectural object starting from your own summer house and play around with concepts, making a lighting plan.
For those who want to try: the original photo with the theater , and the sky used in the example .
1) We take a photo of the building in the afternoon in cloudy weather, when there are no sharp shadows, but there is enough light for the camera to make a good picture.
2) Select the sky with a “magic wand”, create a new layer and fill the selection with solid color. Now, having deselected, it can be returned at any time by holding Ctrl and clicking on the icon of the layer with the red field.
3) Drop any suitable sky onto the picture, and invert the prepared selection (Select> Inverse) and remove the unnecessary from the sky layer.
And the new sky falls into place.
4) Create a copy of the theater layer and create twilight, reducing the lightness of the layer (Image> Adjustments> Hue / Saturation) to "-60".
5) With a magic wand, select the windows in some windows and remove them from the layer with the twilight theater. “Daylight” windows become visible under the removal, which enlivens the picture and makes the building even more twilight in contrast to its bright windows.
6) In order for the building to acquire an evening color, we create a gradient from the dark blue of the sky to the red lighting with sodium lamps.
7) And apply this gradient to a new layer on top of others
9) Change the blend mode of the layer with the gradient from “normal” to “overlay”. If the effect seems too harsh, you can reduce the transparency of the layer, making it less than 100% to taste. And then the building plunged into the evening city darkness.
10) Create a reflection of the columns on the marble around the fountain. To do this, duplicate the layer with the building (Layer> Duplicate Layer), press Ctrl + T, flip and squeeze the layer so that the reflection of the columns goes where you need it.
Press "Enter", accepting the transformation of the layer. Using a soft rubber band, delete everything except the columns from it and change the layer blending mode from “normal” to “overlay”. Voila - the reflection of the columns of the building appeared in marble under the fountain. To make the reflection less cartoonish and more realistic, you can whiten the entire reflection layer a little (Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur) and reduce the transparency of the layer if desired.
11) Now let's turn on the lights. To do this, create a new layer.
Change the blending mode of the layer from “normal” to “overlay”, and now everything that we paint with a white color on this layer with a brush will become light.
And if we double-click on the layer’s icon, check the “Color Overlay” checkbox in its properties, select a warm color shade and “Overlay” blending mode ...
... the lights will become much more expressive:
12) Erase the trial light zigzag, and draw the actual light. Let's start with the columns - selecting the column with a magic wand and shading the selection borders (Select> Modify> Feather), draw a light from white to transparent that goes from the bottom up.
13) Holding Shift + Alt and clinging with an arrow to this light, transfer it to all other columns. So in a few seconds we will multiply typical lighting to other elements of the building.
14) By adjusting the transparency and hardness of the brush, draw white light on the illuminating layer of the rest of the light in accordance with the concept. For more realism, you need to leave shadows under the trees and add light on the sidewalks from street lamps - this light should not be uniform.
And to make the lights softer and more natural, apply a small Blair to the entire backlight layer (Filter> Blur> Gaussian Blur).
15) The visualization is almost ready, but I could not resist and applied HDRToning to it (Image> Adjustments> HDRToning).
Result:
In the same way, you can virtually highlight any architectural object starting from your own summer house and play around with concepts, making a lighting plan.
For those who want to try: the original photo with the theater , and the sky used in the example .
