June 22, 2011, 04:52:48 pm
Nice work Nicholas! I think the PP version is too heavy in contrast. The straight Lumion renders now have great tone mapping (as you know), so, I would leave the tone of the image alone and maybe just adjust the white balance slightly. (add a touch of blue and cyan to the highlights, no more than 5 and then bring back just a touch of warmth (red, yellow) to the shadows.) You can also adjust the hue/saturation and play with the greens and yellows (slightly) to add some realism. Adding contrast is always a fine balance of not making the shadow areas loose visibility and not blowing out the highlights. You can do a duplicate layer set to multiply and play with the opacity to get some contrast. (I use the Levels usually) I then use the shadow/highlights option to help bring back some of the dark areas.
What's great is that there is such a good consistency in the lumion renders to begin with, that when you find the sweet spot for PP, you can create a Lumion PP action button and process a render in one click.