I decided to go for a simple Daz Studio scene that just focused on the character and hair. After rendering all my light layers in Iray and putting everything together in Photoshop, I got the more colorful image on the left (below).

Left – More colorful cyborg girl fantasy art from my usual Photoshop post-work process. Right – Unsaturated version of the cyborg girl image achieved with an adjustment layer and blending effects in Photoshop.

Creating an Un-Saturated Image

I add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and set the Saturation value to -100.

The initial image seemed a bit too colorful, so I wanted to see how the image would look in gray-scale (unsaturated). To do this, I add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in Photoshop (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation), after my completed image. I set the Saturation value to -100.

After adding my adjustment layer, I get the cyborg girl gray-scale image below. Unfortunately, it looks a bit drab without any color at all.

Gray-scale cyborg girl fantasy art image.

Using Photoshop Blending Mode to Get More Color

We can change our layer blending mode by going to the drop-down menu at the top of our layer’s tab.

To get some interesting effects, I started playing around with different blending modes for my Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. We can change our layer blending mode by going to the drop-down menu at the top of our layer’s tab (see right). When I set the blending mode to Darken, I get the cool effect below.

Cyborg girl sci-fi fantasy image with blending mode set to “Darken” for our Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

If I set blending mode to Lighten, I get a different color effect.

Cyborg girl sci-fi fantasy image with blending mode set to “Lighten” for our Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Final Cyborg Girl Image

I finally settled on the Lighter Color blending mode, which is mainly unsaturated with strong blue highlights. After some further sharpening and contrast adjustment, I get my final image.

This was a fun exercise to see the different Photoshop blending mode effects. However, note that the results will be highly dependent on the colors of the original image.

Cyborg girl sci-fi fantasy image with blending mode set to “Lighter Color” for our Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

This tutorial is the first in a series designed to highlight and showcase the powerful abilities of the the Nik Collection, which is a suite of 7 plug-ins that provide an impressive array of photo editing capabilities: from color correction, retouching and creative effects to image sharpening and a wide range of special effects.

While they used to retail for $500 (and worth every penny) the good folks at Google are making it available to everyone free of charge because that’s their way.

Grab a copy here and let’s get started!

How to Transform Your 3D Art into a Charcoal Sketch

1. Using Silver Efex Pro 2 (Nik Collection)

In this installment, we will be using Silver Efex Pro 2 to turn this render of Antfarm’s Walker HD (see below) into a fine art charcoal study. For the duration of this tutorial, Silver Efex Pro 2 will be referred to as SEP2. Brace yourselves; technique is coming…

Basic Daz Studio 3Delight render without any additional lights.

I’ve taken a basic 3DL render without any additional lights, but obviously you can do this with any image (even a photograph) that has the proper value range into the SEP2 suite and run Antique Plate II (preset 36) with the default settings. Since you want it to look like a sketch, you mostly want a high contrast image without much midtones (those values will be lost).

Therefore, if your results aren’t looking like the example, just undo the SEP2 filter and adjust the levels until you get a good balance of lights and darks (in Photoshop). Then restore the filter with Ctrl+F. Rinse, wash, repeat until you get the desired results. Alternatively, you may also adjust contrast and brightness from within the SEP2 interface.

Once you are happy with the results, Right click > Flatten Image.

Image after applying Antique Plate II (preset 36) from the SEP2 suite in Nik Collection tools.

2. Warming Filter and Increasing Contrast

Once you have a solid base, the edges are already fading out just like an unfinished sketch. Notice how the clouds have become abstracted, almost like a doodle and they’re getting lost in all the background noise which is starting to look like paper grain. You could almost stop here, but why not push it a bit further?

Warming layer filter settings in Photoshop.

Create an adjustment layer/photo filter (in Photoshop) and select the Warming Filter(85). Ensure that Preserve Luminosity is ticked, then run the density up to around 88% or so.

Image result after applying the warming adjustment layer described above.

This is way too orange, but have no fear, we’re going to fix that now.

Photoshop layer stack after these operations.

• Copy the SEP2 (background layer) via Ctrl+J.
• Desaturate with Ctrl+shift+U.
• Invert with Ctrl+I.

The end result is shown below. This will be your layer mask, so hit Ctrl+A to select all and then cut it with Ctrl+X

Our image mask after desaturating and inverting our background (original) image.

• Duplicate the Silver Efex Pro 2 (background layer) twice.
• Apply a layer mask to the first one (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All).
• Go to the channels tab and then paste the layer mask in the alpha channel with Ctrl+V. Note that visibility of the layer must be on before pasting, then turn it off after.
• Set the layer to Multiply to punch up the shadows.

That’s nice but I want some more color in there, so

Photoshop layer stack after operations to punch up our shadows and add in more color.

• Merge the photo filter onto the other background layer copy. (Right click > Merge Down).
• Set the layer to Linear Light.
• Then Right click > Create Clipping Mask. See how rich those dark values just got?

Our Photoshop layer tab after performing the operations described here.

Still looks a little drab, so let’s duplicate the photo filter layer and reset the mode to Normal, but drop the opacity down to 40%.

Our 3D-art image after adding in a warming filter and punching up the shadows in Photoshop.

3. Add Hatching

To make it look more like a sketch, let’s introduce some hatching. Save what you have so far and then flatten everything (Right click > Flatten Image). Launch SEP2 and use Wet Rocks (preset 23) to get this grainy looking result.

Image result after applying the Wet Rocks (preset 23) from SEP2, in the Nik Collection tool.

Photoshop layer stack after adding Angled Strokes operations.

• Ctrl+L and enter 15/.75/255 to adjust the value range.
• Set the layer to Overlay at 40% opacity.
• Do Filter > Brush Strokes > Angled Strokes. I used 50/15/3 but if you’re doing your own image, just try for something like the image below.

Adjust Filter > Gallery > Angled Strokes until we get something that looks like this. Settings will be different depending on your image.

If you want to add some color, now would be a good time to try Hue/Saturation or even just Alt+Ctrl+L. You can keep messing around with it, but I’m done…

Final result of transforming our 3D-art render into a charcoal sketch using Photoshop and the Nik Collection tools.

Summary

While the Nik Collection was developed for photographers, any Photoshop user can tell you that Photoshop isn’t just for photographs and neither is the Nik Collection In fact, since 3D-art renders are really just simulated photographs, we will enjoy a much higher degree of overlap with the intended purpose than someone using the Nik Collection on colored line-art, for example.

I’ve began this series with a technique of turning a render into a charcoal sketch to underscore the concept that the Nik Collection has a much wider gamut of applications than mere photo editing, so you need not restrict yourself to using these filters only in the ways in which they were intended.

There are applications for the Nik Collection that the developers never even dreamed of!

In future installments, we will be exploring many different uses for the Nik Collection; some will cover the features much like a manual, while others will take it to a completely different level. Please look forward to it!

This article and all of the images within were created by the very talented Alex Ledante. Copyright © Alex Ledante. Check out his gallery here.

Depending on the artist, some things can be more effectively done in post, and some in Daz Studio. We get to decide, which techniques best help us transform what we see in our heads onto paper.

Step-by-Step Daz Studio Iray Post-Work Tutorial

My current Daz Studio Iray post-work process consists of 3 stages:

• Stage 1 – Combine Iray light layers and fix rendering artifacts.
• Stage 2 – Soften, sharpen, glow, color, and contrast.
• Stage 3 – HDR filter. We are currently using Color Efex Pro 4 from the Nik Collection. Available for free here.

All three stages are performed in Photoshop, but depending on the look that I am going for, I sometimes skip Stage 3. We will be using the Pearls image above in our step by step post-work tutorial. My recent images can be found here.

Stage 1 – Combine Lights and Fix Rendering Artifacts

Add in a soft background layer and our 5 Iray rendered light layers.

1. Add a soft image to provide an appropriate background. Here, we used one of the photographs from Lady Kassie’s Oriental background set.
2. We rendered 5 different light layers in Daz Studio Iray – Key, Fill, two Back Lights, and an Environment Map. For the Environment Map, we used the Tropical Ruins HDRi from sIBL Archives. We have Dome turned off, and saved the light layer as a PNG file.
3. We add in our light layers using the process described in How I Combine Iray Lights in Photoshop.
4. The added gray Photo Filter layer on top of our IBL layer is used to darken our IBL image, so that it fits our background and composition. By changing the gray color, we can lighten or darken our IBL layer.
5. If we zoom in on our current image, we will notice that there are certain rendering artifacts. In particular, the Asian woman’s hair collides with her thumb-nail. In addition, there is a missing pearl on the strand around her hand.

The Asian woman’s hair collides with her thumb-nail. In addition, there is a missing pearl on the strand around her hand.
6. We can fix this in post by using the Clone Stamp tool. In general, however, we want to minimize the number and extent of fixes we need to make, as we will get better results by dealing with it in Daz Studio.

Removed collisions and added in a pearl using the Clone Stamp tool.
7. Copy our completed Stage 1 image (shown below) by doing Shift + Ctrl + C (Edit > Copy Merged).
8. Create a new file by doing Ctrl + N, and then Ctrl + V to paste our Stage 1 image into the new file.

Completed Stage 1 image.

Stage 2 – Soften, Sharpen, Glow, Color, and Contrast

1. Right-click on our Stage 1 layer and select Merge Down.
2. Add glow to our image by using the process described here.

After running the Shiba Glow action on our Stage 1 image.

Re-tone or recolor our image by using a Gradient Map adjustment layer, set to Violet, Orange color range.
3. Turn off the Tint layer by clicking on the eye icon to the left of the layer.
4. Select the Glow3 layer. Do Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map.
5. Select the Gradient Map layer and pick the Violet,Orange color range in the Adjustments menu (see right).
6. Set the blending mode of our Gradient Map layer to Screen and set opacity to 30%.
    
   We use the gradient map to retone/recolor our image. The Violet,Orange color range works well in in many cases, especially for realistic images. For fantasy pieces, I may use different colors in my gradient map.
7. Create a copy of all our layers by doing Shift + Ctrl + Alt + E (Stamp Visible).
8. Select our new layer, name it Soften, and set blending mode to Soft Light. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the radius according to the amount of softening that you want.
9. Open our volumetric light file and paste it after our Soften layer.

Adding two softening operations – Gaussian Blur layer and our Volumetric light.

Select the Levels layer and set the middle value to 0.75 in the Adjustments menu.
10. Select the Soften layer and do Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels. This Levels layer will help to increase contrast in our image, so that it doesn’t look so flat. We set the middle value in the Levels adjustments settings to 0.75 (see right).
11. At this point, our image looks rather dark and a bit blurry. Therefore, we want to lighten our image and bring back some detail.

After our softening effects, the image looks rather dark and a bit blurry.

Right-click on the Environment Map layer and pick Duplicate Layer.
12. Open our Environment Map (Tropical Ruins) image. Right-click on the Environment Map layer and pick Duplicate Layer (see right). In the pop-up menu, under Destination > Document, select our current working image (see below).
     
    This will duplicate our Environment Map layer into our working document. We name the layer Lighten.

In Destination > Document, select our current working image file.

This is what our Photoshop layer stack looks like after adding the lighten and sharpen layers.
13. Set the blending mode of the Lighten layer to Screen. This will add the Environment Map light into our image. Adjust opacity to the level that we want. In this case I set it to 60%.
14. Duplicate our new Environment Map layer (this time into the same document, which is the default). Name this new layer Sharpen.
15. Set the blending mode of this new layer to Soft Light and opacity to 100%. Go to Filter > Other > High Pass. Set the radius to 5.0 pixels.
     
    This creates a sharpening layer from our Environment Map to bring back some of our image details. We can further increase sharpening by setting the layer blend mode to Overlay. As usual, we can use the opacity dial to make more minor adjustments.

 
After adding our lighten and and sharpen layers, our image is now brighter and has more detail.


Left – Before; Right – After adding the lighten and sharpen layers.

Add warm tint and a Vignette layer.
16. Turn the visibility of the Tint layer back on by clicking on the check-box to the left. This will give a warm tint to our image. We can control how warm our image is by changing the opacity of this layer.
17. Select the Tint layer and do Layer > New > Layer. This creates a new layer on top of our tint layer.
18. Select our new layer and name it Vignette. Ctrl-A to select the entire layer and do Edit > Fill. In the pop-up menu select Black as our fill color and make sure that opacity is set to 100%.
19. Set the blend mode of our Vignette layer to Multiply and opacity to 30%.
20. Do Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All. Click on our mask layer to select it.

How to select the Elliptical Marquee Tool.
21. Select the Marquee tool on the left Photoshop toolbar. Right-click on it, and select Elliptical Marquee Tool (see right). Draw an elliptical marquee around the area of our image that we want to emphasize (e.g. her face and pearls). We can also do Edit > Free Transform to rotate and scale our elliptical marquee to get it to the right position, size, and orientation.

Draw an elliptical marquee in the area we want to emphasize. Edit > Free Transform to rotate, scale, and move, our selection.
22. Once we have it in the position that we want, do Edit > Fill > Black. This will create a light area around the part of the image we want to highlight.

Create a light area around the part of the image we want to highlight by using our Vignette layer.
23. Click somewhere else on the screen to deselect our marquee. Do Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur to soften out the edges of our circle.
24. Duplicate our Vignette layer and set blend mode to Soft Light. This finishes our Stage 2 process.
25. As before, Copy our completed Stage 2 image (shown below) by doing Shift + Ctrl + C (Edit > Copy Merged).
26. Create a new file by doing Ctrl + N, and then Ctrl + V to paste our Stage 2 image into the new file.

Our image and layer stack after finishing the Stage 2 process.

Stage 3 – HDR Filter

1. Right-click on our Stage 2 layer and select Merge Down.
2. Click on Color Efex Pro 4 from the Nik Collection (Download for free here).
3. Select Detail Extractor in the Color Efex Pro 4 interface. In this case, I use the default settings (see below) and hit ok.

Use the Detail Extractor in Color Efex 4 from the Nik Collection to bring out more image details.

Our Detail Extractor layer with a mask for the areas we want to emphasize (e.g. face).
4. This adds a new Detail Extractor layer to our image file. We can then set the opacity of that layer to control the level of detail added. In this case, I set the opacity to 30%.
5. In addition, we may only want to add detail on certain parts of the image. To do this, select our Detail Extractor layer and do Layer > Layer Mask > Hide All. Then, paint in the areas where we want more detail.
6. Also note that the Detail Extractor operation will lighten our image. To re-balance the layer so that it better matches the original Stage 2 image, we add a Levels adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels). Make sure to check Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask, so that the Levels adjustment only applies to our Detail Extractor layer.

Make sure to check Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask.
7. Set the middle number in the Levels adjustments menu to 0.9. This finishes our Stage 3 process.

I do not always use the HDR filter. For this composition, I actually prefer the softer image, so I posted the finished Stage 2 image in my Daz Gallery. In fact, this applies to all of the methods outlined above; we only apply them if they help to enhance our image. Experiment with opacity and adjustment settings to get the results that you want.

Hope you enjoyed this step-by-step post-work tutorial.

Asian woman holding pearls final image (with HDR filter).