Weekly Assignment #67: Out of Scale

Nikolai · February 7, 2008

I was truly amazed by the amount and quality of the PS work the contestants put in to last LPS semifinal. One of my personal favorites was Hanging The Moon (by Greensquared). And while this slew of artistically improved images initiated another round of hot debates, I thought to myself that it can be a good exercise for us mere mortals to try our skills in post-processing.

This class' task is to bring an object out of its real scale into the picture where its size would seem drastically different. It could be one of the Dalantech's spiders on the freeway, or the Big Ben as a paper weight on a regular desk, or a toddler launching the real F-22 into the air...
As usual all the materials (original images) should be fresh, i.e. taken with this assignment in mind. Your entry should be also realistic enough, so be careful about the lights direction and shadow path.

One final image per entry, multiple entries are OK. Also please submit the original images and any additional how to info you deem necessary.

Let's get surreal!

douglas · February 9, 2008

Here is one to get things going.
And I thought I ordered a pocket knife....

Here is the first shot done indoors uncropped and sharpened

The second shot was done outdoors, I put camera on tripod and focused on a spot on ground, set camera on timer and tried to run over to the right spot and pose for shot. I missed the focus spot a bit but here it is uncropped and sharpened

Then i cut the background out of knife useing mostly magic wand in CS2, added a new layer in the outdoor shot and cut and pasted the knife to the new layer. My posing was off so i decided to rotate and risize the knife using transform untill it lined up better with my hands. I selected my right hand with magic wand and erased my fingers from the knife layer. Some cloning out of propane tank in background and snow for base of knife and then cropped and resized.

And this was the end result.

Nikolai · February 9, 2008

douglas wrote:

And I thought I ordered a pocket knife....

Nice one, Douglas, I like it!

But you forgot to provide the original pics (please read the requirements).

Also, in the spirit of neatpicking, the reflection on the handle is too uniform for this size

douglas · February 9, 2008

Nikolai wrote:

Nice one, Douglas, I like it!
But you forgot to provide the original pics (please read the requirements).
Also, in the spirit of neatpicking, the reflection on the handle is too uniform for this size

Thanks Nik! I edited my original post and added both shots used for the final pic, along with some detail of how I did it.

Nikolai · February 9, 2008

douglas wrote:

Thanks Nik! I edited my original post and added both shots used for the final pic, along with some detail of how I did it.

Thanks, much appreciated!

JayMitch · February 10, 2008

Banana Man
Okay, this is my first try at this. Hope I can figure our how to do it.

Original images:

and

The technique was pretty much like Douglas described above. The only tricky bit was getting the fingers to look natural. They didn't look like they were in contact with the fruit, so I tried adding a little shadow beside each finger. I'm not sure I did it too artfully, but even so it helped a bit. Doing the shots inside made it easier to match up the lighting. I just lit the banana from above left, and lit he background picture the same way.

--Jay

Nikolai · February 10, 2008

JayMitch wrote:

Okay, this is my first try at this. Hope I can figure our how to do it.
The technique was pretty much like Douglas described above. The only tricky bit was getting the fingers to look natural. They didn't look like they were in contact with the fruit, so I tried adding a little shadow beside each finger. I'm not sure I did it too artfully, but even so it helped a bit.
--Jay

Jay, thank you very much nice banana!
The way to go around the "shadow" issue is to hold something white (like a sheet of paper) in your hands, and then later use luminosity belnding mode to get the shadow onto your scaled subject (i.e. banana in your case).

JayMitch · February 11, 2008

Nikolai wrote:

Jay, thank you very much nice banana!
The way to go around the "shadow" issue is to hold something white (like a sheet of paper) in your hands, and then later use luminosity belnding mode to get the shadow onto your scaled subject (i.e. banana in your case).

Thanks for the tip.

--Jay

Izzy Garavito · February 14, 2008

hahaha great stuff and good assignment Nik!

I definitely need to work on my PS skills, as reflected on my lack of votes last SF. I'll give this one a shot next week after posting a final picture for the LPS

goonie · February 16, 2008

This one looks out of my league, well, most of them are out of my league. I'll sit back and learn:lurk

Slinky0390 · February 16, 2008

As I suspected, proper lighting would be my downfall. After dozens of attempts, I just couldn't get the lighting to look the same in both pictures

. Oh well, props to the people that can actually do stuff like this, because it truly requires skill.

Nikolai · February 16, 2008

goonie wrote:

This one looks out of my league, well, most of them are out of my league. I'll sit back and learn:lurk

Come on, try it, it's fun, nobody's gonna bite you... hard

Nikolai · February 16, 2008

Slinky0390 wrote:

As I suspected, proper lighting would be my downfall. After dozens of attempts, I just couldn't get the lighting to look the same in both pictures . Oh well, props to the people that can actually do stuff like this, because it truly requires skill.

All you need is an ability to use two drastically different focal lengths (be it zoomable P&S or two different lenses on DSLR), so you can bring two differently sized objects to a similar scale relative to your frame. If you do this under the same lighting using similar angles it really should be kid's play. The only trick wouble to make sure the background of one of the shots (most likely the "out-of-scale" subject one) is easily erasable, so you can the implant it into the context shot without spending gobs of time.

Slinky0390 · February 19, 2008

Nikolai wrote:

All you need is an ability to use two drastically different focal lengths (be it zoomable P&S or two different lenses on DSLR), so you can bring two differently sized objects to a similar scale relative to your frame. If you do this under the same lighting using similar angles it really should be kid's play. The only trick wouble to make sure the background of one of the shots (most likely the "out-of-scale" subject one) is easily erasable, so you can the implant it into the context shot without spending gobs of time.

I gave it another go, but I feel like it's just not my cup of tea.

Nikolai · February 19, 2008

Slinky0390 wrote:

I gave it another go, but I feel like it's just not my cup of tea.

A bit rough on the edges (literally:-), but I like the idea, thank you very much!

Slinky0390 · February 19, 2008

Nikolai wrote:

A bit rough on the edges (literally:-), but I like the idea, thank you very much!

Yeah, I worked on it rather quickly between school, and dinner.

Weekly Assignment #67: Out of Scale

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