COVERING OUR TRACKS January 2006
by John
Mantzefield
copyright 2006
A
couple of years ago I saw a local TV news piece about
the Oregon Historical Society which prompted me to
wonder if I could use one of their old photos as a
background image for a Mouse Tracks cover. The plan was
to start with a good quality photo and then add
computer generated graphic elements over it to create
an interesting scene. The OHS facility has museum
exhibits on the lower floors and a photographic archive
on the upper floor. Their photo archive contains
thousands of old photos that are organized into general
categories, like the business group that I looked
through. The main thing I was looking for as I sorted
through the photos were pictures that had maintained
most of their original contrast and sharpness, and it
had to be a well composed shot.
There
were so many pictures to examine I had to spend two
days at OHS to find a few pictures that might work for
an MT cover. The original picture I chose (Click on the
image to the left to see a low-rez copy) was reproduced
by OHS from a photographic copy negative. The black and
white 8X10 copy print I bought was them scanned at
300DPI into my G5 Mac using an Epson Expression 1680
flatbed scanner. The scanned photo was enhanced using
Photoshop adjustment functions like Levels and Curves.
Dust and scratches were removed with PS tools like the
Clone Stamp, Healing Brush, Blur or Smudge tools.
Removing imperfections in textured areas is far easier
than in areas of smooth surface contours. For smooth
area repairs I will often begin with the Clone Stamp
tools to remove the gross imperfections, then smooth
out the areas with the Blur or Smudge tools.
MAKING DECISIONS
When I was deciding what to add to the background image a few things seemed to stand out, certainly a robot had to replace the driver and the original wooden spoked wheels had to go. If you have robotic technology you can’t have the original lantern style headlights on the truck, so new headlights were added. Robots carrying a flat panel delivery display device must have radio communications, so the antennas on the truck were next on my list. I couldn’t leave the long horizontal sign on the building alone and a name change to the PMUG store seemed like an obvious choice. The top of the shot looked like it really needed some additional elements, so I modeled and rendered the satellite dish in Cinema4D and added the bookstore sign to fill these blank spaces with things that wouldn’t distract from the futuristic/retro truck and it’s new driver. I considered adding rusty pipes and other techno-devices to the upper right blank wall, and spaceships and clouds to the skyline, but I decided that these elements could make the scene to cluttered.
CROPPING AND COMPOSING
The main difference between the archive photo and the cover image is that the original is a horizontal shot and so my first decision was how much of the picture should be cropped. In Photoshop CS2 I opened an MT cover reference image (7.25”X8”-1233X1360 Grayscale at 170pi) that’s the size of the cover’s picture area. I copied this into a new Layer of the OHS truck photo. The next step was to place the mouse cursor over the cover reference’s thumbnail in the Layer Palette and Com+click - this selects the image’s perimeter. Next I made a new Layer and Scaled the reference selection (choose Select>Transform Selection and hold the Shift key to constrain the selection’s shape) up so that it framed the area of the truck photo that I would keep. Next I choose Select>Inverse (Shift+Com I) which reverses the selected area so that now the outside of the cover reference is selected. Follow this by making the Background color black and then hold Com and press the Backspace key. This fills the selected area with the black Background color and makes a mask that is the aspect ratio of the cover image area. With this black MT cover mask on the top Layer it could be moved around with the Move Tool (or Scaled up or down if needed) to determine the best composition for the cover.
MAKING DECISIONS
When I was deciding what to add to the background image a few things seemed to stand out, certainly a robot had to replace the driver and the original wooden spoked wheels had to go. If you have robotic technology you can’t have the original lantern style headlights on the truck, so new headlights were added. Robots carrying a flat panel delivery display device must have radio communications, so the antennas on the truck were next on my list. I couldn’t leave the long horizontal sign on the building alone and a name change to the PMUG store seemed like an obvious choice. The top of the shot looked like it really needed some additional elements, so I modeled and rendered the satellite dish in Cinema4D and added the bookstore sign to fill these blank spaces with things that wouldn’t distract from the futuristic/retro truck and it’s new driver. I considered adding rusty pipes and other techno-devices to the upper right blank wall, and spaceships and clouds to the skyline, but I decided that these elements could make the scene to cluttered.
CROPPING AND COMPOSING
The main difference between the archive photo and the cover image is that the original is a horizontal shot and so my first decision was how much of the picture should be cropped. In Photoshop CS2 I opened an MT cover reference image (7.25”X8”-1233X1360 Grayscale at 170pi) that’s the size of the cover’s picture area. I copied this into a new Layer of the OHS truck photo. The next step was to place the mouse cursor over the cover reference’s thumbnail in the Layer Palette and Com+click - this selects the image’s perimeter. Next I made a new Layer and Scaled the reference selection (choose Select>Transform Selection and hold the Shift key to constrain the selection’s shape) up so that it framed the area of the truck photo that I would keep. Next I choose Select>Inverse (Shift+Com I) which reverses the selected area so that now the outside of the cover reference is selected. Follow this by making the Background color black and then hold Com and press the Backspace key. This fills the selected area with the black Background color and makes a mask that is the aspect ratio of the cover image area. With this black MT cover mask on the top Layer it could be moved around with the Move Tool (or Scaled up or down if needed) to determine the best composition for the cover.
ALTERING REALITY
At this point I could see that the entire truck was really to long to fit into the cover’s image area, so I copied the back half of truck and using Layer Masks I painted out the building behind the truck and all of the shipping boxes inside the truck’s cargo area. I then moved the isolated back half of the truck forward and aligned it with the driver cab. From my collection of stock photos I chose several computer equipment box photos and removed their backgrounds with Layer Masks. Each of these new shipping box images were then scaled and placed on separate Layers over a black background so that they would fill the truck’s cargo space. At this point I had completed the general background image for the cover, so it was time to adjust the image’s contrast levels so that it would be reproduced as well as one can expect from the limited grayscale printing method used to print the magazine.
PROOFING SETUP IN PHOTOSHOP
The purpose of the following steps is to change the way Photoshop displays the image on your monitor so that it will look like it does when the magazine is printed. The method I use is to select View>Proof Setup>Custom and then under Proof Conditions click on Device to Simulate. A long list of printing methods, camera types, etc. will scroll down the screen, just move down the list (about half way) until you find the item called “Gray Gamma 2.2” and select it as your Device to Simulate. When you do this you’ll immediately notice that your grayscale image becomes a little darker, this is OK. NOTE: If you are going to be using this grayscale proof setting frequently it’s easy to have it appear at the bottom of the View>Proof Setup pulldown menu. Before you close the Custom dialog box click the Save button and name your setup something like “Gray2.2_MT_Cover” - this name will now appear at the bottom of the View>Proof Setup menu. It’s sort of important to have this handy because this proofing setup isn’t Photoshop’s default setup. Once I have the Gray2.2 proofing set up then I adjust the image’s contrast levels using the Image>Adjustment>Levels dialog box. This is sometimes followed by additional adjustments with Image>Adjustment>Brightness/Contrast or Curves.
ADDING
3D OBJECTS TO THE SCENE
This cover project is made up of 39 Photoshop Layers which composited 7 Cinema4D 3D objects (rendered as TIF files) and several small Photoshop painted elements that were placed over the background truck image. An example of these elements would be the painted areas around the wheels which allowed the new 3D wheels to be flawlessly composited. The image to the left shows how the truck’s original lantern style headlights were replaced with modern looking headlights. At “A” you can see the wireframe shape of the 3D modeled headlights and “B” points to the (dashed white outline) copy of the original headlight brackets that needed to be placed over the new 3D headlight and “C” is the C4D rendered headlight TIF image.
OVERCOMING THE LEARNING CURVE
If you want to learn Photoshop quickly one method is to buy a CD or DVD tutorial from one of the following companies. These products play in your Macs CD/DVD player, so it’s just like watching a TV show where a graphics expert shows you how to use Photoshop or other programs. I have purchased tutorials from each of these companies and was satisfied with them all: photoshopvideos.com, vtc.com, macacademy.com and totaltraining.com.
At this point I could see that the entire truck was really to long to fit into the cover’s image area, so I copied the back half of truck and using Layer Masks I painted out the building behind the truck and all of the shipping boxes inside the truck’s cargo area. I then moved the isolated back half of the truck forward and aligned it with the driver cab. From my collection of stock photos I chose several computer equipment box photos and removed their backgrounds with Layer Masks. Each of these new shipping box images were then scaled and placed on separate Layers over a black background so that they would fill the truck’s cargo space. At this point I had completed the general background image for the cover, so it was time to adjust the image’s contrast levels so that it would be reproduced as well as one can expect from the limited grayscale printing method used to print the magazine.
PROOFING SETUP IN PHOTOSHOP
The purpose of the following steps is to change the way Photoshop displays the image on your monitor so that it will look like it does when the magazine is printed. The method I use is to select View>Proof Setup>Custom and then under Proof Conditions click on Device to Simulate. A long list of printing methods, camera types, etc. will scroll down the screen, just move down the list (about half way) until you find the item called “Gray Gamma 2.2” and select it as your Device to Simulate. When you do this you’ll immediately notice that your grayscale image becomes a little darker, this is OK. NOTE: If you are going to be using this grayscale proof setting frequently it’s easy to have it appear at the bottom of the View>Proof Setup pulldown menu. Before you close the Custom dialog box click the Save button and name your setup something like “Gray2.2_MT_Cover” - this name will now appear at the bottom of the View>Proof Setup menu. It’s sort of important to have this handy because this proofing setup isn’t Photoshop’s default setup. Once I have the Gray2.2 proofing set up then I adjust the image’s contrast levels using the Image>Adjustment>Levels dialog box. This is sometimes followed by additional adjustments with Image>Adjustment>Brightness/Contrast or Curves.
This cover project is made up of 39 Photoshop Layers which composited 7 Cinema4D 3D objects (rendered as TIF files) and several small Photoshop painted elements that were placed over the background truck image. An example of these elements would be the painted areas around the wheels which allowed the new 3D wheels to be flawlessly composited. The image to the left shows how the truck’s original lantern style headlights were replaced with modern looking headlights. At “A” you can see the wireframe shape of the 3D modeled headlights and “B” points to the (dashed white outline) copy of the original headlight brackets that needed to be placed over the new 3D headlight and “C” is the C4D rendered headlight TIF image.
OVERCOMING THE LEARNING CURVE
If you want to learn Photoshop quickly one method is to buy a CD or DVD tutorial from one of the following companies. These products play in your Macs CD/DVD player, so it’s just like watching a TV show where a graphics expert shows you how to use Photoshop or other programs. I have purchased tutorials from each of these companies and was satisfied with them all: photoshopvideos.com, vtc.com, macacademy.com and totaltraining.com.
