A guide on how to postprocess images to get the most out of Terragen
When you render an image in Terragen,
there is almost always a sharp divide between land and
sky (fig.1). The way to overcome this is to render the
image double size and then resample the
image to a lower size - preferably half size. This
smoothes out the sharp edges, making the images look
better. Most better paint programs (Photoshop, Paint Shop
Pro, etc.) offer this feature. Most of my images are originally rendered at 1500*1000 and resampled to 750*500 before putting them on the web. Bear in mind that at present, Terragen does not allow you to render images greater than 1000 pixels in height. |
![]() not resampled |
![]() using resampling |
Changing the colour balance is generally not a good idea with Terragen images, as Terragen tries to emulate real-world lighting already, and colour detail can be lost. It is far better to experiment with Exposure and Lighting settings instead. However, some nice effects can be gained by using gamma correction with values between 0.5 and 1.
This will be an integral part of Terragen in the future. For now, you have to add lens flare manually using programs such as Photoshop. The key here is to make it subtle! Equally important is to choose the flare's origin point accurately. Usually, in Photoshop I will use between 50% and 75% brightness, or I will fade in a 100% bright flare.
"Unsharpening" is a sharpening process that applies itself more to higher-contrast areas - which makes it perfect for bringing out details in craggy landscapes. I find it best to use a softening filter first, and then apply the unsharpening with a radius of around 1.5 pixels. I generally do this before antialiasing the picture. | ![]() no unsharpening |
![]() with unsharpening |
The best way to approach any post-processing of Terragen images is - realism. Always try to keep the realism in your pictures and you should get good results.
![]() render controls |
![]() landscape |
![]() water |
![]() clouds |
![]() atmosphere |
![]() lighting |
![]() image |
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