415e9f60$1@news.povray.org...
> I'm often finding that when I bring up the color histogram for a completed
> work,  I haven't used the full color range-- things are kind of washed out
> to medium levels of brightness.
>
> Any tips on how to maximize contrast in the artistic color sense (don't 
> mean
> compositional sense)?

It's not easy. I think that the best way is to mimic real life lighting as 
much as possible.

- Get rid of the default ambient 0.1 in the finish.
- Use high intensity values for lights. See Jaime's lightsys macro for 
instance. In any case, the trick, for indoor lights, is to have very high 
intensities and very short fade distances.
- Use darker pigment and colours than one would think (sampling colours from 
photographs is often very telling)
- Rely on radiosity for indirect lighting. The 3.6 unclipped values can give 
beautiful results. Keep the recursion level as low as possible (1 tend to 
give the best constrast, 2 and 3 give more subtle results).

When doing such complex adjustments, it may be practical to use variables to 
control the brightness of lights and the diffuse values of textures. For 
instance you can have the finish statement written like {ambient 0 diffusion 
0.7*Global_Diffusion} and then use the Global_Diffusion value to control the 
way textures look throughout the scene.

It still may be necessary to manipulate the colours in Photoshop (or 
equivalent), for instance by playing with the tone levels. Beware of not 
losing too many colours though.

G.


-- 
**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

Post a reply to this message