Hedgerow Country (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter fmethorst
- Start date
Phantom Warrior
Major
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- May 1, 2009
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- 6,881
A little fun with Photoshop Elements.
Very Creative. The same photo makes a great background shot by blowing it up to the correct scale. I wonder if there is anywhere to upload generic background photos to share? I have several good ones.
Terry
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bromhead
Sergeant Major
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- Aug 7, 2008
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A little fun with Photoshop Elements.
Well done
fmethorst
Command Sergeant Major
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- Feb 18, 2008
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That is really well done mate.How did you cut out your figures so accurately? I have found using the mouse to cut and paste images is no mean feat.
Thanks guys. I've had my eye on that hedgerow picture for a while and I finally got around to trying to insert some of my figures. This was my first attempt so there is still much to learn but it was a lot of fun.
To create this picture I took an individual picture of each figure in front of a solid white background (poor man's version of a green screen). The individual pictures were required to deal with the reduced depth of field available in macro photography. I then reduced the color saturation of each picture by about 50% (those K&C figures are pretty bright). I probably could have reduced it even further. After determining who was going to go where I applied a fog layer (essentially a layer of translucent solid white). Working from the farthest guy away I progressively reduced the opacity from 15%, 10%, 5% and the front guy hase no fog applied. I then extracted each figure from the solid white background using an extraction feature of Photoshop. Basically you identify foreground and background elements and Photoshop does the rest (see picture). I used the white background to ensure Photoshop could easily identify the background and remove it. I then touched up the few areas the software missed and removed the base by hand. From there I took the background picture of the bocage and layered on each figure working from the guy furthest away to the guy in the front. I eyeballed the foreshortening and sized each figure accordingly. Once everything was where I thought it should go I merged all the layers into a single picture. For the aged picture I applied a sepia colored filter, reduced the color saturation by 50% and applied one final layer of translucent white to give it that faded look.
I realize the lighting could have been done better on the figures and the focus probably could have been softened a tad so they aren't so stark but overall I thought the result was satisfactory. It has definitely given me some ideas for future pictures.
