with this alternative with just one big well-known
landmark and I love the feeling that eventually it
turned out really great.”
Once the basic 3D was assembled, Photoshop
became the key tool in the process. “In this project,
Photoshop was a great help. When you are doing a
complex scene in 3D like this one, you always end up
with some parts that are not completely realistic. So
we used matte painting techniques in Photoshop to
fine-tune the parts. We also added a good amount of
the small, but very necessary details in Photoshop
too: dust, particles, rocks, damaged roads, mud,
Banksy artworks and many other things that create
the specific atmosphere of the overall image.
“What I was surprised with in this project was
that Photoshop really handled this kind of complex
and 11,000x7,000 pixels resolution file with great
performance. Secondly I love the layer organisation
in Photoshop. When you are painting something, thespeed of the artist’s response is the most
important, [rather than things like] layer
organisation, but when you are dealing with a
complex scene like this one, you have to be very
careful not to get lost inside the file.
“I definitely love the Refine Edge tool – when I use
it with constant edge detection radius and want to
go back to the original edge on some areas I usually
use a History brush for this. This way I have better
control over opacity and other parameters.
I also use a Black & White adjustment to
create various selections. This way I can use
colours to help isolate part of the image that I
want to use as a selection. A classic example is a
tree in front of the sky – using Black & White I can
take advantage of the colours and tone up the
greens and tone down the blues in the sky. This
can help me create a better selection without any
spills and additional tweaks.”GOING
UNDERGROUNDWhen you are doing a complex scene you always end up with
some parts that are not completely realistic, so we used matte
painting techniques in Photoshop to fine-tune the parts01
REALISTIC INFRASTRUCTURE
The underground section was quite
challenging to make look good, it took some
experimenting and designing to get to the final look.
We just knew that it needed to look cool, quite
complicated and mega, but at the same time it
should make sense somehow and convince viewers
that the actual underground infrastructure may look
more or less similar to this.02
YELLOW AND BLUE LIGHTING
We were experimenting with lighting
quite a lot and we were considering the addition of
yellow reflector light and blue tinted light from the
right side in order to make the whole part a bit
more interesting and eye catching.03
LIGHTING PASS IN PHOTOSHOP
In the end we decided not to show the
reflector itself, but to use the yellow lighting (rendered
separately) without showing the light source itself. As
we were progressing we saw that the underground
section looked good by itself and we didn’t need to
distract the viewer. An additional lightning pass render
for the underground section was added in post.04
TEXTURE AND DETAIL
Details were added incrementally on the
way (elevator, ventilation, glass elements, piano
player etc.). We used different material for the shafts
in order to get some variation in the look of the
underground section and make it more interesting.05
FINAL RETOUCHING IN PHOTOSHOP
This is the final retouched version where the
edges were destroyed, soil was enhanced, particles
and dust were added as well as many more additional
details, like people, traffic, street art and much more.Creative space: Radoxist Studio is
based in an old factory in Bratislava, Slovakia, that is now home to a
group of creative studiosDetails count:that Underground commuters are familiar with, so iconic street art The image needed to accurately represent the London
by Banksy was added in to enhance the realism of the pieceThe Professional Photoshop Book 173
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