ray tracing: love the crispness and it lets me put lighting exactly how i want to. could be because of my graphic card (nvidia rtx 5070) but i really struggle with path tracing lol. the last zeno pic i took was with pt but it makes my textures look very patchy and blurry in a way

world builder for lighting: @glitchinginthegarden did a fantastic tutorial on how to use it and it literally changed my life. leaving the [link] here for you. i prefer setting up my stuff using this tool instead of cyberlit because it lets you see exactly where you’re putting stuff/the way you’re rotating it/etc

reshade and otis_inf’s tools

lighting settings: [depends but i generally have:]

a massive area light as a main source that tends toward white but remains in a cool tone, such as green, cyan, or blue, for instance #D9EFFF. i place it so the shadows are subtle (usually coming from the front, left/right, just a tiny bit above the character’s head), but again it depends on the shot! reduce radius to your preference

then another one that sets the colors. yes yes the colors! you can crank up saturation with this one because then, again, i usually reduce radius and focus the thing only on the part i want to pop out the most. this also helps with vibrance later

hightlights are done either by toggling on spotlight capsule and moving the light source wherever or you can have a much more stark highlight by creating a point light, set roughness bias to -127 and toggle off scene diffuse. i used this method for the white hightlights here [disclaimer: for some reason this setting doesn’t work for me from world builder so i usually switch back to cyberlit]

by using this method, you can also add a little bit of depth to your character’s face:

by lighting your picture nicely you should have a good base to work with later in photoshop/reshade

reshade settings:

shoutout to @preemshots for suggesting to use prod80 luts because those sliders are so good. just don’t forget to play around with settings (lut chroma/luma/intensity) to create your perfect base

i also use a bit of bloom to lighten my picture at best. my favourite are: ppfx bloom, bessel_bloom and gaussian bloom. you can also use the bloom option from the env tuner tool!

use mxao for shadows (quint’s or immerse’s are my favourite)

some sharpen sliders for… well sharpening (i stack up three)

i also use lightroom to work with colors. it has so many options and lets you even adjust brightness/contrast/gamma/etc if you unlike me are reshade savvy lol. i mostly use it to manipulate colors :)

as for photoshop:

i’ll leave a psd here for you. all my steps are numbered and i added some descriptions for you to see what i did and why. as you can notice, the base pics are not that contrasted or vibrant. again, i’m a newbie here and i cannot seem to understand how to lighten up properly from only reshade. still, as i mentioned, the lighting process helps me setting the tone for the whole picture, which is why i listed all the stuff i do

i use a different coloring on each picture usually, but my process is generally that of a giffer, so lighten > contrast > (eventually lighten again) > base colors > removing ugly tints > work with colors again if needed > adjust hightlights if needed. in the psd i linked i also used a fun way to add contrast with colors (always work with complementary hues!!!!)

i generally make colors pop by balancing out each tone! so for example, if the picture is super green, i add some magenta. if it’s super yellow, i add back some blues and so on. channel mixer/white and grey pointdrop in curves tool are your besties if you’re working with these. and of course, selective color

as for lighting: i tend to avoid the base brightness/contrast layer and instead work with curves! it has everything you need (let me know if you need a tutorial though, i’d be happy to help)

#resources on my profile has a bunch of tutorials :) i learned all the things i know from those