Post-work
Here's the image right after rendering it in Vray. It's a little too dark and flat for my taste so I'll take it into Photoshop and touch it up a little.
The first thing I do is adjust the Levels. This is going to be different for every image since it depends on how dark the render is. For this image I adjusted the right Input level from 255 to 180.
Then I add more contrast to the image by adjusting the Brightness/Contrast values. For this image I increased the contrast to 7.
Then to give the image a warmer feel I adjusted the yellow midtones to -8 using the Color Balance tool.
The last thing I do is use Neil Blevins' specular bloom method to add an even more dramatic effect to the lighting. The tutorial for this can be found here:
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/specular_bloom/specular_bloom.htm
I will outline it quickly here too. The first thing to do is to duplicate the Background Layer. Then add an extreme amount of contrast to the image and lower the brightness. For this image I raised the contrast to 90 and lowered the brightness to around -100. This will differ for each image. Basically what you see highlighted will received the bloom effect. When your contrast and brightness values are less extreme more of the scene will receive the bloom. In some cases this may not be what is wanted since it can wash out the image overall.
Duplicate the Background layer
Adjust Brightness and Contrast to extremes
The next step is to desaturate the layer that will take on the bloom effect. Then add a Gaussian blur filter to the layer. I usually adjust the setting to around 15 pixels.
Desaturate the layer.
And add a Gaussian Blur effect.
Then change the layer setting to linear dodge . The lighting should look blown out now so we'll need to lower the opacity . I usually set it around 10-15%.
And that's it!
