Tips for Photoshopping Floor Plans

[richardarnold]

I'm often asked in my job to add colour and textures to 2d CAD plans, and I find this to be one of the hardest things to get looking in any way good. Tiling textures ends up looking a bit garish. Using flat colours helps to indicate zones, but most of the time doesn't help to give much of an impression of what the space would be like. So I find it very difficult to strike a balance.

 

Google image searching for "Rendered Plans" or "Coloured Plans" reveals plenty of relevant images, but none of them look that great. They all have the problems I experience.

 

Does anyone have any hints or tips for improving this, or any examples of drawings which do this well?

[CJI]

CAD plans, like CAD elevations in my experience have to be treated with subtlety and often really muted toned down colours. Have a look at some award winning architects sites to see how they do it. They usually have a very muted and tight colour pallette, often only using different shades of of the same colour.

 

I usually try and steer well clear of CAD plans as they usually don't look that great regardless what you do to them, i sometimes just highlight the floor in a light texture or something if at all and usually stick to shades of grey if anything. There is something inherently beautiful in pared down well drawn line drawings. Much like the old drawings of Le Corbusier or Frank Lloyd Wright for example. You can go to town in detail on elevations and sections though and they usually come up great. Just remember, subtlety... Well, thats my take on it anyway.

[salvador]

I usually open my finished CAD in Illustrator, shade the walls depending on usage / level view with tones of grey and use seamless photographic textures for the floors and grounds. Then I put the furniture from a growing PNG library I already have (been growing it for some time now) and add a subtle drop shadow on each piece and the same goes for the plants.

 

The result is pretty rich and clients seem to like it. Of course, to speed up things, I have a CAD - Max - Illustrator workflow that lets me complete a set of plans in just a couple of hours. If you want to see a sample, PM me.