Most of the time I find original pictures to have too much contrast and saturation. This is usually what is expected in traditional photography, but for photogrammetry, I prefer flatter tones, so I usually decrease the contrast and saturation. In PhotoLab there is a preset which is doing exactly what I need called “Neutral colors”, it decreases contrast, slightly reduces saturation and boosts vibrancy (saturation of lesser colored areas). Later in the processing, Substance Designer’s Color Equalizer node can help to bring homogeneity to the overall lighting. Original color is not a determining factor to me, textures that will work together in an environment will need to be harmonized in a final pass so they are likely to change the tone. I am using Photoshop’s Match Color function for base color textures that will work together in an environment.

For this surface, the original material did not have the color tones we see on the render. It didn’t look very attractive in fact, I made the photo session mostly because it was easily accessible. I left this material aside for a long time, and once I was working on tone matching between different rock textures, I included it and it revealed that bluish color, which mixed to other peculiarities of the surface made it actually look cool! So color is really I think a relative notion, I would not try to decide what material to select or not based on its original color, things can change a lot during the processing.

Lighting

So far I only shot in conditions where there was no direct lighting so I did not have to deal with light issues later on. For the Plates Creek project, most of the materials were at the bottom of cliffs. I made sessions early in the morning when the cliffs are shadowing the shore. When the weather was sunny, I had perfect light conditions as the sky was pure blue but the scene being in the shadow of the cliff, I was benefiting from smooth light while having a good amount of ambient light to keep the lens aperture small and ISO low. Other times I was less lucky and had to wait for a cloudy sky. I am aware the light conditions for my environment were close to ideal, this is not always the case for other environments such as forest undergrowth, or where there is a lot of reflection.

Rock plates