Critique on lighting and how do I correct it

Artwork Focused Critiques
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I would like some critiques and tips on lighting to achieve the lighting in my render as shown in the reference image from pinterest. Any tips on composition in Photoshop would be cool as well.

My Render

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image1262×707 194 KB

Reference Image

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image618×633 65 KB

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I have a few tips I can give.

1-Make sure your image is not evenly lit everywhere. You have many different light sources and windows and everything is in the light, which makes the image look flat. Try removing some light sources, maybe the ceiling lamps don’t need to be on when sunlight is flooding the room.

2-Looking at your image, there are some black areas in the shadows. This makes me think you are using Eevee (a bit hard to tell with the current lighting)? If that’s the case, you could try rendering in Cycles instead, as it will give you a more realistic indirect lighting. If you want to keep using Eevee, make sure ambient occlusion and sreen space reflection are activated. Then, you would want to learn about irradiance volumes, which you can use to give your scene proper indirect lighting and shadows.

3-Your reference image doesn’t have direct sunlight. If the exact look is important, you will want to remove the sunlight from your scene and instead boost the strength of your sky background so the light coming from the windows is soft and diffuse.
-If you are in Cycles, you will have to put light portals in the windows so they get sampled as light sources, but using light form the background will otherwise work without any additional work.
-If you are in Eevee, lighting from the sky/background doesn’t have any shadow unless you use and bake an irradiance volume. In Eevee, it could also be a good idea to fake the window’s light by placing area lights in them.

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Thank you very much!

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This render looks great already but as etn249 suggested you should try using Cycles as that may give a more realistic result. Have you tried using an HDRI background to light this?

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Thanks for the suggestion but this is cycles as well as I am using an HDRI in this render, this render is actually post processed in Photoshop and sure enough the post processing is not done nicely. However the info on the sunlight was helpful. Thanks for your time.