Playing with Photoshop...

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EngineerKyle

Member
Oct 3, 2005
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Troy MI
Actually, It's freeware called Photofiltre. I'm not usually into a lot of photo manipulation, but I was playing around with adding sky. Here are the dramatic, too dramatic? results;


DTi2.jpg



pinconning1.jpg



beano3.jpg




When I get a good picture that I don't have to edit, it goes in a Photobucket subdirectory called "unretouched"... I created a new directory for these three above called "very retouched" :twisted:
 
Nice work! The first picture is great with just enough blurring not to give the tranisition a hard edge, but one thing to watch in future work is light sources! The shadows from the trees point right, i.e. the light source is on the left. But the clouds above show the sun is on the right (which would cast shadows to the left!). Of course you "took" this picture by the light of your car headlights. . . on full beam . . . with all your friends' cars there as well! :-)

I am a card modeller myself, but my son (the train fan) and I love looking at all the photos on the "other side of the track" here in the train section!
 
Nice shots but be careful in merging images that the light is always coming from the same direction in both. In the first image the clouds are clearly being illuminated from the right, while the train has the light coming from the left.

CNJ999
 
One of my favorite things to do. Place my models in real life backgrounds. In fact, most of my pics, in "Photo of The Week" threads are composites.
Lately, I've been experimenting with placing my models behind real life shots.
 
Since we are all imitating real life anyways (model railroadly speaking), I see nothing wrong with altering skies. I think Photoshop is an awesome tool and can yield some fine results. My father however, will argue that once altered, the picture is worthless as it is no longer "real."
 
TrainNut said:
Since we are all imitating real life anyways (model railroadly speaking), I see nothing wrong with altering skies. I think Photoshop is an awesome tool and can yield some fine results. My father however, will argue that once altered, the picture is worthless as it is no longer "real."
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I guess it all depends on the purpose/use of the "photo". If the shot is simply for weekend sharing on-line, that's fine. However, if intended for any photo contest, I completely agree with your father!

There is an entire additional layer of talent required in the creation of a realistic model photo as compare to adding scenic details after the fact via Photoshop. I know, as I've done plenty of images both ways. I'll note also, that in many local photo competitions (totally non-RR), manipulated digital images are not allowed, period (to the dismay of certain photogs). They are considered by these groups as examples of graphic arts, rather than of photography.

Another, perhaps more disturbing aspect of image manipulation in my opinion is its slowly increasing use in connection with magazine articles addressing layout tours. I, for one, want to see what a modeler has actually built, not what he/she wishes the layout looked like. One such article appeared in MR a while back, where many of the scenes were in large part faked, with all manner of scenic features having been altered/added without comment. That, to me, is just downright dishonest to the reader.

CNJ999
 
This argument has been going on for years since some guy one the photo contest in MR by manipulating the picture, which prompted MR to make seperate catagories for thier contest. As long as the person admitts that the pic he's enetring has been manipulated, and not trying to pass it off as a "raw shot", I have no problem. Granted, my pics look like a "raw shot", I do admitt that it was staged, and mostly its just sky shots that I use.
Case in point.
Which picture looks better?
 

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88 - However, one has to consider of what value is the manipulated picture (beyond simply nice to look at)? It conveys absolutely nothing about the modeler's abilities or layout scenic accomplishments. If we didn't have the second photo, it might well have been just a loco set on some track mounted on a 2x4.

While perhaps ok for showing on one of the on-line weekend photo threads, this sort of thing can never be seriously considered in any model photo contest...less than half the scene is even of a model!

Even if by some stretch one feels such images can be justified in a contest, how do you evaluate and judge the picture if the foreground and background were taken say by a friend, or lifted from a book by Ansel Adams, or are shots from John Allen's G&D? The whole situation can go down hill very quickly. Those with any vision saw this potential some years back and essentially forced MR to split up its photo contest into reality and fantasy segments.

Nevertheless, I suspect over the next decade we will come to see far, far less in the way of modeling talent exhibited in published model railroad photos and increasingly "idealized" scenes of personal layouts appearing in the magazines, until the situation simply becomes a graphic arts game.

CNJ999
 
CNJ999 said:
88 - However, one has to consider of what value is the manipulated picture (beyond simply nice to look at)? It conveys absolutely nothing about the modeler's abilities or layout scenic accomplishments. If we didn't have the second photo, it might well have been just a loco set on some track mounted on a 2x4.

CNJ999
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I have to agree. When I first started posting pictures here, I tried to show only "completed" scenes. Well, there weren't too many of those available, even with careful consideration given to composition. I wished that I had the skill (and the programme for my computer) :rolleyes: to be able to hide all the unprototypical elements in what were otherwise decent pictures, elements that in many ways were not really all that noticeable to me, especially in person. Of course, I can't seem to get my camera to lie, so overhead lights, bits of benchwork, and unsceniced areas kept popping up in my photos. I finally learned to ignore them, even in the photos. In fact, nowadays I'll often point them out with a comment about unusual "cloud formations" or "Northern lights". :p I think the ultimate "show & tell" for me, though, was my Layout (room) tour..., where nothing was left hidden. (Well, maybe a few things...:oops: ) I think that others will learn as much from seeing some of the stuff that we think shouldn't show as they will from seeing simply the finished product.

Wayne
 
Like I said, I mostly use skyshots, with my modeling in the foreground. Thats to hide the fact that I have yet put in the backdrop.
I posted the wrong pic. I do have a shot with the Big Boy in the forground and a "Sky shot" in the back. That pic was for a calender I was making for my father(Big Boy is his favorite loco...He actually saw one running in Colorodo when he was stationed there in the fifties)
I didn't realize it till after I looked at it a couple of times(Working twelve hours in an eight hour day will do that to ya.)
I am sorry.
But...I am still having fun doing it!
 
88Fan...When I first saw that Big Boy pic on an earlier post, I figured it HAD to be a real-life one, because nobody could ever model that spur in the foreground....Now I know better...

Kyle...We've seen a lot of pics of your layout and really looks kool...But we've got no idea as to what the whole is like. How about a "tour" of the layout, with maybe a track plan thrown in so we know what we're looking at..??
 
Gus,

I'll see what I can put together... for now, here is a long shot of Jonstown looking west. I've a track plan laying around somewhere I'll add.

What do you me by a tour? a video tour... many overhead, long shots with text? let me know.


aso.jpg


Thanks for the interest (I thought you'd never ask?!)
 
Kyle...Not a video tour...too many of us still working through a phone line (not for long..I hope). Just some good shots and a little blurb as to what we're looking at, and where it fits in the scheme as a whole. Kind of what Doctorwayne did some time back.
 
It's interesting that when digital photography came on the scene many people said that it was the end of "film". However that proved not to be the case as digital photos are not admissible in a court of law as they can be altered to show anything that the photographer wished. So film photos with negatives will always be with us.
 
Pitchwife said:
It's interesting that when digital photography came on the scene many people said that it was the end of "film". However that proved not to be the case as digital photos are not admissible in a court of law as they can be altered to show anything that the photographer wished. So film photos with negatives will always be with us.
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I'd have to question the logic in that. Unless the court is going to require that the photographer submit the orginal negatives, how does one proved the method (digital or film) by which the printed images shown in court were obtained? I should likewise think that producing falsified negatives digitally would prove no real challenge. More likely, I'd expect "photographs" to simply become inadmissable in the future, just as the classic lie detector test result did.

Considering that Kodak has already indicated that their slide film production (and likely the processing) will be eliminated by 2010, I suspect virtually all forms of "film" will be gone in the next decade...save perhaps for some highly specialized medical applications. It's simply not cost-effective to continue.

CNJ999
 
CNJ999 said:
I'd have to question the logic in that. Unless the court is going to require that the photographer submit the orginal negatives, how does one proved the method (digital or film) by which the printed images shown in court were obtained? I should likewise think that producing falsified negatives digitally would prove no real challenge. More likely, I'd expect "photographs" to simply become inadmissable in the future, just as the classic lie detector test result did.

Considering that Kodak has already indicated that their slide film production (and likely the processing) will be eliminated by 2010, I suspect virtually all forms of "film" will be gone in the next decade...save perhaps for some highly specialized medical applications. It's simply not cost-effective to continue.

CNJ999
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I don't know about the future, but I have heard that currently a negative is required to be entered into evidence for a photo to be admissable. As far as doctoring negatives, as technology advances there are always new techniques to determine if they have been tampered with. I doubt that photos will ever (at least in the forseeable future) be eliminated. Methods of determining the originality of photos will keep the industry churning. After all, they still make electron tubes. :mrgreen::mrgreen:
 
Hey,Kyle ! NICE panorama ! Though I'm still in armchair mode, always have liked layouts with visual "depth" so one seems to be looking over/through the scene. Also like the way you treated the level split. Way to GO ! More when you can,Please ! Bob
 
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