the Backside

Started by DJkevintron, March 21, 2010, 09:27:42 PM

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sppower

#15
March 28, 2010, 03:25:28 PM Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by Guest
That allows me to save it at 9, which gives us this:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/i- ... directlink
Looks pretty legible on my end, I think.

shmax

#16
March 28, 2010, 03:38:21 PM Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by Guest
Lookin' good! I hate to keep making you jump through hoops like this, but as one last test, can we see what it looks like at a higher resolution but lower quality setting? Say, 1500px or so on the height, and whatever quality setting you can get away with.

sppower

#17
March 28, 2010, 04:20:56 PM Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by Guest
No problem. Being a Transformers nerd makes this more fun than work. So, here's 1500 at quality 7:
http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/1q ... directlink


btw, if I may ask, do you have any tips for shooting all-white pieces like G1 Jazz and Prowl or Sideswipe's missiles? No matter what I do the pictures come back kind of dim. I'm working with a home-made light box, with four 150 Watt GE reveal bulbs pointed at it (admittedly, sort of haphazardly directed with tinfoil: two on the sides pointing inward, two on the top, pointing in and down). I have the ISO set to 100, exposure set to 1+, white balance set to Tungsten, Macro mode on and every other setting that I can find mentioned on the tutorial or buried in older threads in here. All I have left to shoot of the things I could find that I could contribute is just a few white pieces. Of course, after I figure out how to get this better, I'm sure a lot of my previous photos will have problems, so I'll have to go back and do another reshoot, but whatever. At the moment, these white accessories are driving me crazy.

shmax

#18
March 28, 2010, 04:46:04 PM Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by Guest
Nice work! I'm going to go over all of these in more depth after my jog, but in the meantime why not post the pictures of the white parts so we can all see how you're doing with them? More later...

sppower

#19
March 28, 2010, 05:13:36 PM Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by Guest
Thanks so much! Here are some samples:




When I try and mess with the contrast and brightness, the objects just disappear.

shmax

#20
March 28, 2010, 07:25:10 PM Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by Guest
Ah, yes, the dreaded white object dillema. I would try to correct most of this with the camera and lighting. First, try bumping your exposure up to 1.3 or even higher if necessary. If that doesn't help, I'd play around with the lights. If getting a brighter bulb isn't an option, try moving them in closer, or angling them in different ways to try to really blast the background with light. Failing all that, you can sometimes get the rest of the way with Photoshop.I opened a few of your images up in Photoshop, and used the "levels" control to raise the whites as far as I could without nuking the whites on the toy. At that point there was still some grey in the background, so I used PS'es "quick select" tool to select just the background. A quick tutorial on quick select:

1. with the tool selected, hold the mouse button down and sort of paint around in the background until it's mostly selected. Because Jazz is white, parts of him will also get selected.
2. Hold down the alt key, and unselect the white parts of Jazz.

With a little practice, you can select just the background in about a minute or so.

Then, with just the background selected, open up the levels dialog and carefully amp up the whites until the background levels off at pure white. But really Photoshop should be a last resort. Good luck, and I look forward to your next attempt!

yamerias

#21
March 31, 2010, 03:47:25 PM Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 04:00:00 PM by Guest
Just wanted to say a quick thankyou for the tutorial Shmax, I really need to reinstall Photoshop, I currently have PaintShop Pro on my netbook, laptop and PC.
<a href="http://www.shmax.com/img/sigs/signature.swf?user_id=1085" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.shmax.com/img/sigs/signature.swf?user_id=1085</a>

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