When it comes to capturing architecture, it is al about enhancing what’s already there. The appearance of the whole building in our composition is an important factor to consider whenever we conduct a retouching process. Here is a rundown of how Paperboat Creative’s team of experts conducts our post-processing procedure for architecture shoots. If you are a photographer looking to level up your architecture shoots, pick up some tips and tricks that we use to bring out the best in our client’s buildings.
First Step: Color Correction
Touch up raw photos with color correction directly onto your camera. This will adjust the temperature of your photos and correct any warm or cool tones—giving you true to color photographs for an accurate overview of the structure.
Second Step: Frequency Separation
After color correction, select the parts that you wish to highlight the most and reduce unnecessary details for the unimportant parts of the composition. In the case of this photo, we reduced the details on the road so it does not distract the eyes from the building that we want to spotlight. Use Frequency Separation to separate the texture of the road and blend it in by brushing a bluish grey color on the pavement. In this manner, the cracks on the road are more subtle, and detract less attention from the building.
Third Step: Smoothen it Out
Remove any distractions during this adjustment process by utilizing the Clone Stamp Tool or Healing Brush Tools accordingly. This results in a more uniform appearance of the road, letting the building stand out against the rest of the composition.
Fourth Step: Enhance the Sky
Create visual drama by adding a layer mask over the sky. By adding a curve and a color balance layer to your composition, you make the sky appear bluer to the viewer. Finish off this step with a Color Balance Adjustment layer that adds more warmth that makes the structure look more welcoming.
Fift Step: Polish the Picture
Tweak your image’s contrast levels until you are satisfied before adding a final color balance layer to correct any desaturated colors that take away from the building’s appearance. The final step for polishing is to add a High Pass layer on top of all the adjustment layers to add depth and sharpness to the image as a whole.
This architecture retouching process is one that the Paperboat Creative team swears by. We hope that you can use our procedure in elevating your architectural shots, or feel free to get in touch with the Paperboat team for your retouching needs!
