How to simulate macro photography of models on real photos in Photoshop

W
Posted By
wayne
Jan 20, 2007
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1549
Replies
27
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Closed
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>

Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

MacBook Pro 16” Mockups 🔥

– in 4 materials (clay versions included)

– 12 scenes

– 48 MacBook Pro 16″ mockups

– 6000 x 4500 px

R
ronviers
Jan 20, 2007
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

Nice job Wayne. Now if I just had access to the set of Mel Brooks’ ‘Silent Movie’.

Thanks,
Ron
W
wayne
Jan 20, 2007
wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

Nice job Wayne. Now if I just had access to the set of Mel Brooks’ ‘Silent Movie’.

Thanks,
Ron
LOLOLOLOL

Make one.


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
R
ronviers
Jan 20, 2007
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:

Make one.

Perfect – Baudrillard would be proud.
MF
Mike Fields
Jan 20, 2007
Interesting ! I remember seeing an interview several years ago with the guy who used to do the photography for the Lionel Train layouts. He would use (if I remember correctly) a pinhole "lens" and about a 20 minute exposure to get the depth of field needed to keep the entire layout in focus — sort of the reverse of your effect 🙂

mikey

"Wayne J. Cosshall" wrote in message
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
K
KatWoman
Jan 20, 2007
wrote in message
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

Nice job Wayne. Now if I just had access to the set of Mel Brooks’ ‘Silent Movie’.

Thanks,
Ron

very cute!!

I have used that technique on photos of humans not to simulate macro but to give a more telephoto look to snapshots shot with normal lens where I found the background too sharply focused
sometimes when I drop in fake backgrounds

I also found you can shoot a similar look with a cute lens I saw advertised call lens baby
it has a bellows as in old 4×5 cameras
http://www.lensbabies.com/index.php?r=GSLensbaby
B
brionl
Jan 20, 2007
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne

Nice work.
Q
Quintsys
Jan 20, 2007
Wayne J. Cosshall schreef:
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne
So funny, what you actually do is analogous to making real flowers look like fake ones.

I remember from years and years ago that they called it ‘table top photography’ or so.

Carlo (very old)
D
dicktay
Jan 20, 2007
Good stuff.
You may also be interested in the technique for "toy camera" pics.

http://www.dcmag.co.uk/How_to_create_toy_camera_effects.YUBz -Hdo39cnPg.html

Richard

"Wayne J. Cosshall" wrote in message
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
W
wayne
Jan 21, 2007
Thanks all, glad you are enjoying it. I had fun. I find it so wonderful that we have these expensive and wonderful cameras and lenses and then we play with them, use lensbabies, etc and rough the image up. This is what I love about photography.

BTW I’ve added a link on the bottom of each article page to go to a printable version of the page. I hadn’t realised they weren’t printing, at least for some people.

Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
LT
Leigh Taylor
Jan 21, 2007
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>

Would it be fair to say you ripped this off… sorry, took inspiration from, this article, published last month?:

http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/showthread.php?t=342065

If you’re going to recycle someone else’s work so blatantly, you should at least credit them.
K
Koenraad
Jan 21, 2007
"Wayne J. Cosshall" schreef in bericht
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

Goodness me, this could be done much easyer:

Select a rectangle of the part you whish to stay sharp with a feather of about 5 – 10% of the max pixelheight or pixelwidth.
Select-inverse.
Gaussian blur to your own liking.

Finished.

Rutger


http://www.flickr.com/photos/zwaarddrager/sets
W
wayne
Jan 21, 2007
Leigh Taylor wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>

Would it be fair to say you ripped this off… sorry, took inspiration from, this article, published last month?:

http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/showthread.php?t=342065
If you’re going to recycle someone else’s work so blatantly, you should at least credit them.

Hi Leigh,

No I hadn’t seen that one. I’d looked around some months ago to see what people were doing with the technique. I hadn’t found a site with a clear technique that was worth quoting a link to.

Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
W
wayne
Jan 21, 2007
Rutger wrote:

Goodness me, this could be done much easyer:

Select a rectangle of the part you whish to stay sharp with a feather of about 5 – 10% of the max pixelheight or pixelwidth.
Select-inverse.
Gaussian blur to your own liking.

Finished.

Rutger
Yes, but you may not get the control you need with more complex images.

Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
W
wayne
Jan 21, 2007
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Leigh Taylor wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>

Would it be fair to say you ripped this off… sorry, took inspiration from, this article, published last month?:

http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/showthread.php?t=342065
If you’re going to recycle someone else’s work so blatantly, you should at least credit them.

Hi Leigh,

No I hadn’t seen that one. I’d looked around some months ago to see what people were doing with the technique. I hadn’t found a site with a clear technique that was worth quoting a link to.

Cheers,

Wayne
Hi Leigh,

Just to add to that. The early work I found seemed to, from memory, be someone in Japan. I thought about adding links to what I had found but assumed anyone interested would do a Google anyway.

What I mean by having not found any I wanted to quote back when I did the original research is that I had not found anyone who was doing more complex scenes. the guy in Japan, for example, was doing views from highrise buildings, from memory, where the simple blur approach works.

If you want I’ll add links to the new one you pointed out and some of the older ones I found?

Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
W
wayne
Jan 21, 2007
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Hi Leigh,

No I hadn’t seen that one. I’d looked around some months ago to see what people were doing with the technique. I hadn’t found a site with a clear technique that was worth quoting a link to.

Cheers,

Wayne
Hi Leigh,

Just to add to that. The early work I found seemed to, from memory, be someone in Japan. I thought about adding links to what I had found but assumed anyone interested would do a Google anyway.

What I mean by having not found any I wanted to quote back when I did the original research is that I had not found anyone who was doing more complex scenes. the guy in Japan, for example, was doing views from highrise buildings, from memory, where the simple blur approach works.
If you want I’ll add links to the new one you pointed out and some of the older ones I found?

Cheers,

Wayne

Links added. I think you’ll see a number that give the basic technique.

Cheers,

Wayne

Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/
FS
Fat Sam
Jan 21, 2007
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
Rutger wrote:

Goodness me, this could be done much easyer:

Select a rectangle of the part you whish to stay sharp with a feather of about 5 – 10% of the max pixelheight or pixelwidth. Select-inverse.
Gaussian blur to your own liking.

Finished.

Rutger
Yes, but you may not get the control you need with more complex images.
Cheers,

Wayne

I don’t see why not.
Rutger wrote:
"Wayne J. Cosshall" schreef in bericht
Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

Goodness me, this could be done much easyer:

Select a rectangle of the part you whish to stay sharp with a feather of about 5 – 10% of the max pixelheight or pixelwidth.
Select-inverse.
Gaussian blur to your own liking.

Finished.

Rutger

It takes more than just blurring to be effective. Notice the change in height, and other perspective illusions…


Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark
Leigh Taylor wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>

Would it be fair to say you ripped this off… sorry, took inspiration from, this article, published last month?:

http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/showthread.php?t=342065
If you’re going to recycle someone else’s work so blatantly, you should at least credit them.

Surely you realize that there are countless Photoshop experts the world over, and that some of them explore similar concepts. It’s rather "blatant" of you to make this accusation when he clearly is using different image examples, and has created his own graphics to demonstrate every aspect of the process he describes.

How many articles do you supposed there are to explain the use of layers? Did they all steal each other’s stuff?

Sheesh.


Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark
Leigh Taylor wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>

Would it be fair to say you ripped this off… sorry, took inspiration from, this article, published last month?:

http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/showthread.php?t=342065
If you’re going to recycle someone else’s work so blatantly, you should at least credit them.

Surely you realize that there are countless Photoshop experts the world over, and that some of them explore similar concepts. It’s rather "blatant" of you to make this accusation when he clearly is using different image examples, and has created his own graphics to demonstrate every aspect of the process he describes.

How many articles do you supposed there are to explain the use of layers? Did they all steal each other’s stuff?

Sheesh.


Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark
Leigh Taylor wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>

Would it be fair to say you ripped this off… sorry, took inspiration from, this article, published last month?:

http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/showthread.php?t=342065
If you’re going to recycle someone else’s work so blatantly, you should at least credit them.

Surely you realize that there are countless Photoshop experts the world over, and that some of them explore similar concepts. It’s rather "blatant" of you to make this accusation when he clearly is using different image examples, and has created his own graphics to demonstrate every aspect of the process he describes.

How many articles do you supposed there are to explain the use of layers? Did they all steal each other’s stuff?

Sheesh.


Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark
Leigh Taylor wrote:
Wayne J. Cosshall wrote:
I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>

Would it be fair to say you ripped this off… sorry, took inspiration from, this article, published last month?:

http://forums.livingwithstyle.com/showthread.php?t=342065
If you’re going to recycle someone else’s work so blatantly, you should at least credit them.

Surely you realize that there are countless Photoshop experts the world over, and that some of them explore similar concepts. It’s rather "blatant" of you to make this accusation when he clearly is using different image examples, and has created his own graphics to demonstrate every aspect of the process he describes.

How many articles do you supposed there are to explain the use of layers? Did they all steal each other’s stuff?

Sheesh.


Images (Plus Snaps & Grabs) by Mark
Mark
D
Douglas
Jan 24, 2007
"Mark
Douglas wrote:
"Mark
LT
Leigh Taylor
Jan 24, 2007
Surely you realize that there are countless Photoshop experts the world over, and that some of them explore similar concepts. It’s rather "blatant" of you to make this accusation when he clearly is using different image examples, and has created his own graphics to demonstrate every aspect of the process he describes.

How many articles do you supposed there are to explain the use of layers? Did they all steal each other’s stuff?

The original story appeared on Digg last month. It got 3180 diggs and a huge discussion thread on the technique. It was one of the most popular Photoshop technique articles ever to appear on Digg.

Then, a few weeks later, Wayne’s article describing the exact same technique also appears on Digg. Not a generic topic like layers, but the same technique used to achieve the same effect in the same way as the original article.

Wayne says he didn’t see the first article, despite it’s extremely high profile in a web community he clearly moves in. Fair enough, coincidences happen.
CJ
C J Campbell
Jan 24, 2007
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007 04:21:18 -0800, Wayne J. Cosshall wrote (in article <45b2093e$0$9774$>):

Hi All,

I’ve just posted a tutorial on how, in Photoshop, to turn a photo of the real world into one that looks like it is a macro shot of a model railway or similar construction for a bit of fun:
<http://www.dimagemaker.com/article.php?articleID=850>
Cheers,

Wayne

Interesting technique. It does not seem to really look like what you say, though. A model building would be in focus throughout its height, not blurred at top and bottom.

I think, also, that heavy noise reduction to give the image a more plastic appearance would help the effect.


Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor
W
wayne
Jan 26, 2007
Leigh Taylor wrote:
Surely you realize that there are countless Photoshop experts the world over, and that some of them explore similar concepts. It’s rather "blatant" of you to make this accusation when he clearly is using different image examples, and has created his own graphics to demonstrate every aspect of the process he describes.

How many articles do you supposed there are to explain the use of layers? Did they all steal each other’s stuff?

The original story appeared on Digg last month. It got 3180 diggs and a huge discussion thread on the technique. It was one of the most popular Photoshop technique articles ever to appear on Digg.

Then, a few weeks later, Wayne’s article describing the exact same technique also appears on Digg. Not a generic topic like layers, but the same technique used to achieve the same effect in the same way as the original article.

Wayne says he didn’t see the first article, despite it’s extremely high profile in a web community he clearly moves in. Fair enough, coincidences happen.
I post some of my articles on Digg, and some of my readers post my articles there, but I must say I rarely use it myself to research issues, news or techniques, and didn’t in this case.

Cheers,

Wayne


Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher, The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/ Blog http://www.digitalimagemakerworld.com/

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