Readers might already be familiar with “Green Screen”. This is the technique of taking video in front of a bright green background, so that it can later be replaced with something else. Most of what you see in the Star Wars films were done with Green Screen.
The same thing can be done with pictures, which is what I’m going to be showing you here.
Materials Needed:
- Digital Camera
- Figurine
- Computer with Photoshop or Gimp (a free Image Manipulation Program)
NOTE: I am working on a Mac, but most of the shortcuts I give use the same keys. Simply replace Command (CMD) with Control (Ctrl) and it will usually work. If all else fails, use the Help menu to search for the function.
Step One – Taking the Picture
Set Up: A White “Green Screen”
Since we’re working with figurines, that simplifies matters when it comes to making a complete background. I tried using a bright green posterboard I picked up at Wal-Mart, and this was the result:
Uncut
And here it is after following my tutorial:
Cut
There’s a green tint on the figure, which I was unable to get rid of through lighting. The more light I used, the more the figurine tended to reflect the green from the paper.
I’m no photographer, but this kind of a lighting issue seemed like too much of a hassle. Using a white background works out much better on color, and although there are some drawbacks to using white as opposed to green, overall I find it much more effective with small figurines.
Uncut
You might be able to see, but I simply taped up a piece of white paper perpendicular to another piece of paper lying on the table. While the shading throws off the coloring of the background slightly, the background is still uniform enough to make it easy to cut.
Cut
While there are ways to fool around with colors and lighting in Photoshop, it is best overall to start with a picture that has the truest colors possible and work from there.
Tweaked Lighting
If we had tweaked the lighting on the green one, we would have ended up with lighter green. As I say, there are ways to adjust coloring, but this is much easier.
The Moral of the Story – Use something simple, like white, for your background when taking photos of small objects.
Step Two – Cutting Out the Background
Load the Picture in Photoshop
Double-click the background layer to rename it. This unlocks the layer, which is needed for the next couple steps.
Create a New Layer.
Drag the new layer below the original image. This creates a transparent background, otherwise when we cut out the background we would just be making it white.
Using the Crop tool, cut out only what you need from the image. This makes it easier to handle when zooming, and gives us less to cut out.
Zoom in on the picture (CMD +) and select the Magic Wand tool.
Select the area you want to cut out. Shift-Click to add other areas without losing your selection.
Now you can see one of the problems with using a white background. If you look carefully at the image above, the magic select tool has taken areas of Flareon’s mane which are white, and blend in more with the background. In order to deal with this, you generally have two options:
One option is to adjust the tolerance setting on the Magic Select Tool. A Higher setting means the tool will be less picky, a lower setting means it will be more picky. By making the setting lower, you limit the range of colors the tool will grab at once, but there is a trade-off: In the bottom-left corner of this picture, you can see some of the background around the figure is unselected.
Another option is to use the lasso tool to cut out problem areas. Just zoom in and trace around the problem area with your mouse.
If you're worried about precision, you can start by cutting out large chunks, then zoom in to take out smaller slices.
Once you've selected an area you want to cut out, go to Edit > Clear to remove that area and expose the transparent background below.
Using shift-click, you may be able to select all of the areas that need cutting and clear them all at once, but sometimes this will need to be done in separate chunks.
Using the lasso tool, I selected most of the base around Flareon's feet. Since this picture will be used in my custom Heroscape card, I don't need to worry too much about precision on the feet - those are covered by a mist, so they just need to give a good silhoutette.
Using the rectangular marquee or lasso tool, you can select and clear away any remaining bits on the image.
Step Three – The New Background
Now comes the fun part. I searched the internet and found a background image I thought would be fitting for my hand-painted Flareon.
Open the new background image in Photoshop.
Return to the image, Select All (CMD-A) and Copy (CMD-C).
Return to the new background tab and Paste (CMD-V) the image.
Zoom Out (CMD-zero) and toggle Free Transform (CMD-T).
Holding Shift while adjusting the size of the image will make it keep its original proportions.
Simply clicking another tool will cause the "Apply Transformation?" dialog box to pop up. Click apply.
You’re Finished!
Now you may crop and save the picture as you like. I recommend going to File > Save for Web and Devices in order to play around with picture types and quality until you get both the look and file size you are looking for.
Ta-Daa!!
Last-Second Tips:
- Make copies of the image you are working on so you don’t make permanent changes to the original files.
- Make sure you have the right layer selected whenever doing something with a selection (such as Clear).
- Go to Window > History in order to open a box which keeps track of your several past actions. This, plus saving, is a great way to quickly recover from mistakes.
- Try using some of what we did here to create a natural-looking shadow beneath the figure like I did in the picture above. Hint: It involves a new layer, Free Transform, and Edit > Fill…
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