BG/Character Art/Scene Enhancement Process

[hoihoisoi]

Hey everyone, I'm just curious because I'm an art newbie but what is your BG/Character Art/Scene enhancement or touch-up process. This means after all the line art and coloring is completed, what effects and filters do you tend to use to enhance the final product to make it stand out or to make it blend better with all the other elements in the image. I'm just wondering because I've seen a before and after of images with and without effects and it makes quite a world of difference to the final product.

I'm not asking for anything specific, but in general what tools do you tend to go for when you reach this stage of the art creation process and why. If you have an example of your enhancement process and you feel like sharing it, that'd be even better. But overall, what thoughts goes into your enhancement process and in regards to that what tools do you use to enhance the image at hand (Something like if you want to warm up the scene you'd likely go for a photo filter orange effect).

Thanks and hopefully it'll be a discussion everyone will be interested in reading. X)

[indoneko]

Sorry that I didn't bring the before-after samples, but here are some tools that I use frequently :
1. Level adjustment : to increase dynamic range (making the overall image colors look better)
2. Blur : make the image looks softer, or to emulate DoF & speed (with certain types of blur effect)
3. Hue & saturation : for general color adjustment (especially when an ambient is involved)

[chlorofinite]

In drawings, I hardly use Photoshop for anything more than resizing nowadays. I usually use the airbrush tool in SAI with some complementary colors opposite each other set to Overlay and low opacity if anything. But, there's some cool stuff you can do with Photoshop:

Blur - It's a somewhat sloppy method, but I make a greyscale radial gradient outward from the focused part of the image (typically the eyes/face), adjust the contrast, use "load channel as selection" on the combined RGB channel to select the outer color of the gradient (white) and use Gaussian Blur with a 1 pixel radius once or twice on the original image - not anything higher than 1 pixel, it's not the same. Just 1 pixel, multiple times. This creates a blur around the parts far away from the face.
Gradient Map - Creating a Gradient Map layer and setting the gradient to something like dark/cool to light/warm and then setting that layer to Overlay or Soft Light can affect the colors in a nice way. I like to use a sunset gradient I made that's purple → orange → yellow.
Levels - Using the "Midtones Darker" preset makes the image... a bit darker and more saturated, I believe? This is typically the last thing I'd do.

There are also neat things you can do with the color channels, like using Apply Image with the red channel to create a "3D" effect.