Rendering in SketchUp: From Modeling to Presentation for Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Interior Design

Typical Alterations

Below are some typical changes that you can make to material images. Many of these alterations are subjective; others are objective, as described in Chapter 9. Complete as many alterations as needed to improve the texture.

Adjusting Levels/Brightness/Contrast

In Photoshop, select Image ⇒ Adjustments ⇒ Levels or Adjustments ⇒ Brightness/Contrast.

Adjusting the brightness and contrast of a texture allows you to sharpen or mute a texture’s surface details (Fig. 10.8). Contrasting allows texture character to stand out. For example, contrasting brick, concrete, tiled floor, wood grain, or home siding materials will cause the joints, seams, and grains to have greater depth. When rendered, the contrast will give more relief to the material (Fig. 10.9).

Increasing contrast can also increase color saturation. Decreasing the hue and saturation of material after you’ve adjusted the levels is recommended (Fig. 10.10).

Fig. 10.8: Unaltered textures in SketchUp (top) are then rendered (Shaderlight).

Fig. 10.9: The same textures from Fig. 10.8 are adjusted in a photo-editing program and given greater contrast. The top image shows the edited textures in SketchUp. The bottom image shows the textures rendered in Shaderlight with greater depth due to the adjustments.