ModernChivalry.org
Miscellaneous => The Sallyport => Topic started by: Sir Edward on 2012-03-30, 15:21:28
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This is somewhat related to the contest thread, but I thought we could start talking about some ideas for some good portrait shots we can get in our kits. I've been able to photoshop up a few pictures, but that's completely limited by what source photos we already have.
So I thought we could come up with some ideas for poses, locations, and overall scenes we could work on. As a very simple example, here's a photo from the Arn movie. He's just praying with his sword. For a simple shot, it's effective. Notice how they carefully framed it so that your eyes are drawn to his, through the crossguard. Nicely done.
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Something like this?
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/430570_366237713415876_100000889510293_1125974_62422722_n.jpg)
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Yep, very cool!
I'm always envious when people have some great photos. I'm notorious for only getting renfaire shots, so they're all straight-on, and usually with lots of people in the background. Nice clean scenery and well framed shots are always great to see.
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That was for a school project a friend of mine was doing earlier this year.
At a Boyscout Demo
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/259984_215237805182535_100000889510293_668410_7391143_n.jpg)
Repenting for opening my mouth in front of the Princess of The Mists at the wrong time.
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/30480_125788230794160_100000889510293_141243_127533_n.jpg)
Taken just after shooting the video for world wide learn. I figure a big fighting tunic, a camail on the helm, with hidden arms and legs and this would really work.
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/37285_127404280632555_100000889510293_149109_2922596_n.jpg)
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(http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/4306/copyofdsc03580.jpg)
This one good? It aint straight on or just a ren faire shot.
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I think you guys are starting to get away from what I was trying to discuss in this thread. I'm talking about crafting a photo in terms of the pose and location.
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Here we go, in another thread (http://modernchivalry.org/forum/index.php/topic,1039.msg10676.html#msg10676) a while back we shared a bunch of these. This is the kind of thing I'm talking about:
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original01.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original02.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original03.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original04.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original05.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original06.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original07.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original08.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original09.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original10.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original11.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original12.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original13.jpg)
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original14.jpg)
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Any idea how he does those colors? I love that ethereal look.
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It depends on the picture. Which one in particular? The ones I don't know how to do are the ones that almost look like paintings.
Adding glowy stuff, color shifts, etc, aren't that hard. There's a variety of tricks out there. It can be as simple as adding a layer with "screen" blend mode and black fill color, drawing an ellipse in it, and then blurring the heck out of that layer with Gaussian blur, then adjust the opacity.
The image below is probably a good example. I'm not sure what they did to make it look like a painting or ink drawing, but the glow on the right could be a simple overlay like that (and possible just a gradient in that layer rather than a blurred shape):
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original13.jpg)
And in this one, I think it's actual lens flare from a window:
(http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original08.jpg)
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The ones that look like paintings. I've seen that sort of thing around the net and have always thought it was cool.
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There's a watercolors conversion that I used a tried a while back on some car pictures here: http://10steps.sg/photoshop/transform-photo-into-watercolor-painting/ (http://10steps.sg/photoshop/transform-photo-into-watercolor-painting/)
Seems like a lot of my favorites aren't centered around the person / people in them, but around the entire atmosphere. One of my favorites:
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/338860_211487495572731_111994695522012_549131_7574859_o.jpg (https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/338860_211487495572731_111994695522012_549131_7574859_o.jpg)
The photoshopped blade reflection is fantastic. In contrast to most other ones, I like how the background is blurred and subdued.
I also really like this one for the not-the-usual perspective:
http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original09.jpg (http://s156.photobucket.com/albums/t8/jba3/medieval/from-myarmoury/original09.jpg)
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https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/338860_211487495572731_111994695522012_549131_7574859_o.jpg (https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/338860_211487495572731_111994695522012_549131_7574859_o.jpg)
The photoshopped blade reflection is fantastic. In contrast to most other ones, I like how the background is blurred and subdued.
Yeah, I really like what they did with the reflection on the blade in that one. It's a really nice idea, and dresses up the photo quite a lot.
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Here's my attempts at being phototgenic. :)
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Some more. Basically I'm hoping they're good enough to photoshop into something nice by someone who knows how to photoshop *Hint Hint* 8)
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And the last bunch. I promise.
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https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/526270_3253055758570_1032321511_33061081_766468004_n.jpg
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/526270_3253055758570_1032321511_33061081_766468004_n.jpg)
me in the middle. awesome effect the guy had
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https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/526270_3253055758570_1032321511_33061081_766468004_n.jpg
(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/526270_3253055758570_1032321511_33061081_766468004_n.jpg)
me in the middle. awesome effect the guy had
Yeah, I saw that on facebook, along with the unedited copy. He did some interesting stuff with the contrast to really make the faces pop, and to enhance the texture of everything else.
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The only thing I would have to say that is wrong with the picture is those grunts are entirely too clean! - They need to go without a shower for a week or two in their BDUs then take the picture! ;)
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everyone always says the clean bit. that was taken after a day in the woods. you can see carsons torn pants my torn elbow and zacks torn shoulder(thank you modern razor wire still left up by the modern military) . wool uniforms are so easy to keep clean it isnt even funny. once they get soiled you literally wait till they dry and brush off the dirt. my pants are originals and still look that good hehehe.
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everyone always says the clean bit. that was taken after a day in the woods.
Exactly! A day is not a week or two. ;)
Basically if the BDUs can't stand up on their own due to the accumulated dirt, grime and body salts then they are too clean. ;)
I remember sections of my BDUs actually turning white from being saturated with so much of my body salt after a couple weeks in the field. It was even more prevalent with those old OD fatigues.
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ah but bdus are cotton not wool too ;) i dont wash my uniform unless its a display event or dday where i need to look clean. the 41 jackets are cotton exterier, what you can't see is my right arm is black from my belly craw under a machine gun nest hehehe. it's still fun though. we get dirty then clean up. we do 12+ events a year and after 3 years the only thing that shows it's wear is the boots.
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Some more. Basically I'm hoping they're good enough to photoshop into something nice by someone who knows how to photoshop *Hint Hint* 8)
These aren't too bad, overall. The only thing is that these are mostly 720 pixels high. I'd much rather work with images that are 2000 or larger.
As we discussed, the black background isn't bad, it just becomes a problem if there's something on you that's black that it's right in front of the black background, because it gets lost.
The lighting is fantastic on these. No sharp shadows. This is surprising since it looks like a camera flash was used. Normally this is bad. But basically, this is the kind of lighting to aim for if you want to do photoshop projects, specifically diffuse lighting. Outdoor shots work great for this too if it's shaded or overcast, and no "noisy" background.
Rule of thumb-- The final product is only as good as the pictures you work from, so if the original is blurry, over-exposed, or badly jpeg compressed, there's only so much you can do to fix it. That is, I don't have the skill or patience to fix a bad photo, and I doubt anyone else here would either. :)
I already posted this one in another thread, but I'll share it again here. This was maybe a 5-10 minute hack. I made use of the pure-black background to blast out the contrast to get the mask I needed to lift Nathan out of the picture. Then it just took some color adjusting and minor touch-ups around the edges, and paste in a background and apply a blur to that background. Done.
(http://modernchivalry.org/pictures/photoshop/nathan-glaring.jpg)
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I just thought I'd post a quick example of really basic retouching, using a picture taken by Sir Brian's lovely wife. Images often come off the camera with poor contrast. I think in an effort to make the images not come out too dark, often the deep black and dark colors get washed out.
A simple two-step process I often use is to hit it with "Levels" in photoshop, to adjust the black and white levels on the histogram to get the dark blacks and bright whites back, and then use "Curves" to give it an S-curve for the contrast, deepening the darks and brightening the lights.
Sometimes I'll go on and do more to the picture, but these two steps can do wonders for most pictures.
(http://modernchivalry.org/pictures/photoshop/brian-and-bailey_720px.jpg) (http://modernchivalry.org/pictures/photoshop/brian-and-bailey_1920px.jpg)
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Wow, nicely done. I need to try this soon on a few of my own.
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Well done Sir Edward! Your retouched photo is much better than the original! :)
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Well done Sir Edward! Your retouched photo is much better than the original! :)
I hope you don't mind me picking on one of your photos. It was just a really good example since it came out so grey. :)
Technically both steps can be done in Curves, but Levels makes it more obvious what you're doing on the ends of the histogram.
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Just realize curves is generally only available in real photoshop (i.e. the creative suite versions, not elements) most consumer level photo editing software just has levels, but you can accomplish the same things in a more roundabout way. I tend to use Photoshop Lightroom for all my retouching, and reserve Photoshop for heavy manipulation.
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Nice picture, Sir Brian & nice touch-up, Sir Edward. :)