Understanding the Principles of Light Behavior - Photographic Rendering with V-Ray for SketchUp - page 177

The next step in the exercise would be to review the images that we have captured.
Examining the images with the naked eye will reveal the shifts in color cast that each
distinct light source produces. If we then take those same images to an image edit-
ing application such as Photoshop and use the color picker to grab the color from
the white object that we were using in our shots, we will be able to measure in much
more precise detail the color shift that each of the lighting scenarios produced.
Now, although you may be tempted to skip time-consuming exercises such as this,
you do so at your own peril. Becoming familiar with how real-world light sources af-
fect the color balance in a photographic image can become an invaluable tool in the
hands of a CG render artist who is trying to create photographic looking images.
Color temperature - exercise two
As seen in the Color_Temperature.skp file, another way that we can program
our brain to understand color temperature settings would be to mimic the temperat-
ure of specific light sources using the HSV values found in our quick reference table.
We apply these to the color swatch in the Intensity section of the light editor options.
Then, once each image is rendered, save it to disk and again use the color picker in
Photoshop or a similar image editor to compare the coloration values being picked
up by the white walls that the light is shining onto.
This particular example shows the coloration we get when we set our light color to
HSV 20, 255, 255. This is equivalent to a temperature setting of 1,850 degrees on
the Kelvin scale.