Interesting trick, the image reminds me of my night vision, when it is to 
dark to see color. I would like to see a second version.
Did you output at 16bit per RGB? I looks like a typical HDRI that needs 
16bit or more per channel.

One PP trick I use, I call "soft shadow masked level correction".
Copy the image into the selection channel and blur it ( experience will 
tell you how much you need for any given image ) then use this soft self 
selection to bring down the highlights a little. Invert the selection and 
then bring up the shadows a little. I do this using the grey slider in the 
levels menu on GIMP or PS, so that I leave the true white and black levels 
where they are. Then convert to 8bit per channel for JPG save.

It would be interesting to see if your trick image could be used in PP to 
add a little more realism or complexity to a "normal" render's luminance 
values.

Xplo Eristotle wrote:

> Last night I got bored, so I made this for the hell of it. There's no
> point light sources *and* no radiosity; it's all done with blurred
> reflection (10k samples!). Some pp was done in Photoshop to brighten the
> pic.
> 
> Things that would improve the pic:
> 
> - lower adc_bailout (I had it set to 1/32 to speed rendering, but it
> doesn't give good results in shadowed areas)
> - more samples
> - higher resolution
> - Kari's dynamic range tweaking
> - not using such a lameassed technique ;)
> 
> Many of these would be feasible on a faster computer, however.
> 
> Took about 7 1/2 hours and 100k (!) of memory.
> 
> -Xplo

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