[JTB]

First, I want to say that this must be the silly post of the year, on the other hand it is a good example of what we may hear from our clients.

One of my clients prefers the look of Vray's exterior because he likes better the dark shadows. Not only that but he prefers to see Vray without the GI methods, the one that produces almost black shadows. He knows of course that this is not real but he finds it more artistic

Anyway, I want to ask all you PhotoShop users if it is possible with some filters or commands to "turn Maxwell into Vray". To darken a little the shadows. Brightness and contrast doesn't help much.

Thanks in advance for your time

[mmhnemo]

Long time since i used PS but i believe unsharp masking and tweaking contrast curves in lab mode (no color tweaking) might get you on the right track.
Change to Lab-mode (Image > Mode > Lab Color) and select the "Lightness" channel. In the Lab-Mode you can work on lightness and color in separate channels. As digital photos show some chromatic noise inately, it is wise to sharpen the lightness information only.

[Fernando Tella]

In PS I would try with Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlight or Levels

[deadalvs]

well, if there were a shadow layer to render out, this were no problem, adding more contrast to that layer would do the job.

but now, i think it's best to use this:
there's a tool - i think it is called «curves» or «gradiation curves» in english - found under image|adjustments, well, in the series of commands where ther is brightness/contrast or levels.

looks like this:


this makes lets You control the following:
dark tones can be made darker (overall) or bright tones can be made darker or whatever...

this might help... add a few knots, until Your result looks ok with the darkness of the shadow.

* * *

v-ray-renders looks kinda waxy. maybe add a subtle overall gaussian blur (filter)

[rivoli]

as already suggested you may want to tweak curves, levels, selective colors, gamma, exposure and whatnot.

mmhnemo's is a very good tip, you may want to apply any change to the overall contrast of the image only to the luminance channel (or, if you're not comfortable working in lab mode, duplicate the luminance channel, switch back to rgb, and use it as a mask).

anyway, bear in mind that any modification to the original image's pixels is quite likely to degrade your rendering at each step. and since maxwell can't output anything other than 8 bit per channel, you're probably better off not stretching it too far.

[JTB]

Thank you all, I will try and see...