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I'm pretty good at Photoshop, but aside from adding word balloons and captions, I hardly ever use postwork. I suppose it's a point of pride. For me, reliance on postwork is analagous to using autotune when making audio recordings. I guess that makes me one of the "snooty" ones. That said, I recently scored a bunch of Ron's Brushes for around $1.20 each, so I may incorporate more postwork in the near future. There's nothing immoral about it or anything.
Some useful techniques included in there, interesting ho he bolstered the staff to draw more attention.
HA HA! Sorry mr clam I didn't mean to call anyone HERE "snooty" but I know I did go off the deep end a little - chalk it up to OMR Syndrome (Old Man Rant Syndrome). I was referring more to the early days when traditional 3D artists would laugh and scoff at Poser and DAZ Artists and get downright rude and nasty to us. I fully RESPECT people who have the time and mindset to create 100% 3D renders that are beautiful and mind-blowing in their technical expertise and ability. I don't judge people either way, no-post or lots-of-post, as long as they don't criticize others for how they produce their own art.
I produce art because the act of it feeds my soul. The finished product is but a small factor compared to the cathartic process.
Hopefully Ron's Brushes (always AMAAAAZING!) won't be your gateway drug to the dark side. Unless of course, Ron's Brushes lead you to create even more amazing art! HA HA!
Put simply, I use whatever tool I can to produce what I intend. What I intend changes as time progresses as what takes shape can often feed back into the original idea.
I fix render anomolies and do spme color balancing. Otherwise what Iray spits out os what you get.
For me, reliance on postwork is analogous to using autotune when making audio recordings.
Obviously, I will take exception to both the music analogy AND the point of taking pride in NOT doing postwork.
The latter is opinion, which is fine, the former is an off analogy since Post Work entails more than masking render errors and deficiencies.
If you think recording(s), then post work is
Reverb/Echo ~ DOF
Compression ~ Level adjustments
Stereo Width ~ Aspect ratio
EQ ~ Color Balance and Tone Mapping
Editing can be anything from composite recording (Do you record and use everything and only do one take?)
Removing implosives, do you crop and heal and clone?
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There's a huge spectrum when it comes to post work.
And to be honest, nobody cares.
Let's see your art. If it looks good, it looks good.
If it looks bad, nobody cares how you made it or what you did or didn't do - or what imaginary criteria (we made up for ourselves) was met.
Imagine if movies were distributed straight out of camera.
That's more like a documentary or news coverage.
It's interesting to me to hear this viewpoint since one of the reasons I do such heavy postwork is that I feel like it's the best way to make a piece mine. I learned photomanipulation, traditional art, and digital art long before I ever touched 3D, so the way I express my personality in a render is whatever lets me use those skills. Meanwhile some 3D artists look down on DS because to them, there's not much point in rendering if you're not doing it to show off your own modeled work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Somebody mentioned befores and afters so here's a couple of raw renders vs. finished pieces. I actually wish I'd rendered the background and figures separately in the first one so I could stick a few more environmental props in there and then composite everything. (Another benefit of postwork; I will never be able to render complex full scenes with my current setup.)
I believe in making the images you envisioned no matter how you get there.
Love what you did with A new game @plasma_ring. What did you use?
The problem with pride, is it stops us using the right tool for the job... Or even admitting we could be wrong.
Thank you very much! It's mostly Photoshop with some extra paint textures from Topaz Studio 2. :D
Some of the postwork you guys posted is amazing.
I would love to know how to do something like that.
I feel like Iray, at the moment at least, has plenty of things lacking so depending on what you want to achieve, postwork might be vital.
Personally, I have never seen a straight render that could not have been made better with postwork. Even just hand applying burn and dodge brushes in the appropriate places makes such a difference. Straight renders look like phone photos to me while postwork makes the image look like art. And I don't mean just straight filters, but going in with brushes and manually doing personalized postwork...
...musically speaking, I have issues with is use of voclaising software that is used to try and make bad and mediocre singers sound good. I've even heard it used in karaoke to which I ask "why" as it isn't a "competition", it's all about having fun. I even disliked it when synthesised systems started replacing real musical instruments and musicians (I find the synthesised orchestra "hit" to be particularly annoying and way over used).
...as to the topic of postwork, besides my arthritic disability I basically looked to squeeze what I could out of rendering as until the subscription version of Photoshop I didn't have the funds for a perpetual license (which was something like 700$ at the time).
I almost feel post processing is "cheating" for some reason, so I try to get everything right in the render itself. Smoke and haze, however, are usually done in post.
The fact that Photoshop, camera RAW and, before that, photgraphic darkrooms, were ever created is testament to the fact that post-manipulation is a fundamental basic requirement for the vast majority of real-world photography. In fact, outside of old instant camera photos, slides and home movies like your grandma's pictures of your dad in the backyard when he was three, the vast majority of any category of photgraphic images that you have EVER seen in your entire life has been subject to some kind of post-production, ranging from re-cropping, editing and exposure adjustment to state of the art retouching and digital visual effects. And yes, that includes the preview images on your DSLR or phone unless you've specifically disengaged that processing, and even the majority of amateur photos that were sent to photo-labs for printing have been subjected to at least some kind of human or mechanized photo enhancement since negative print film was originally introduced. It's ALL manipulated to produce an image that the eye reads as looking "better".
So, if professional photographers and camera manufacturers, who have the advantage of working with real people, real lighting and real environments, have considered post-work a vital and necessary tool since the literal dawn of photography, it really seems that trying to acheive everything in a single render is ultimately more an exercise in trying to beat the mechanics of the software for the sake of beating the mechanics of the software than it is anything else. That's not to say that it's not a valid aesthetic choice, because it IS if that's your preference, but it's more along the vein of intentionally limiting your options just to prove that you can do something with one hand tied behind your back, sculpting with silly putty or only painting with your feet than it is matter of adhering to some arbitary artistic requirement.