RAY'S DIGITAL MAGIC

HOME		W ith the group's modules still under development, it became apparent to the group's resident photographer (Ray) that many of the pictures would be more interesting if there was a background to complete the scene.  Using the power of JASC Paint Shop Pro 7 (Adobe, you charge too much), the photo doctoring commenced.   With a little ambition and skill, combined with the wonders of alcohol, some interesting scenes came to fruition.  This page showcases some of the results.   Enjoy...     -Ray
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OWL AT THE LAKE One of the first attempts was made with several photos from the January work session at MSOE.  At the time, Greg's lake module provided one of the more developed scenery to use as a foreground.   Add OWL motive power, and the basis for a good photo was born.   Here is the first shot at the lake, unedited.  Note that a piece of foamboard is being used to provide a basic uniform background. On the first attempt, a synthetic sky was added using a simple fill gradient.  Cumulus clouds were airbrushed in to break up the perfect uniformity of  the sky.  A simple reflective copy was used with a 50% transparency factor to add the sky reflection to the water surface.  Not too bad, but there was room for improvement. Going for a little more drama, I took an evening sky picture and superimposed the foreground scene on top of  it.  The foreground brightness was also reduced, and the blue level saturation increased to simulate more indirect light from the sky, rather than sunlight itself.  Once again, a simple reflective copy with a 50% transparency factor was used to carry the sky down onto the water.  In order to break-up the  monotony of a perfectly smooth surface, a ripple effect was added to enhance the water surface, and provide some visual depth.

OWL 3081 AT THE CROSSING Another creation that arose from the same batch of photos taken at the work session.   The original picture, unedited.  Again,  a piece of foamboard is being used to provide a basic uniform background. First, just for looks, a synthetic sky made from a simple color gradient fill (boring). For something a little less artificial, some cirrus clouds from another real sky picture.  Nicer sky, but the scene lacks a full perspective, as if the earth just abruptly ended not too far behind the locomotives. Switching to another panoramic shot with some rural-looking background helps fill the need for additional scene perspective.  Headlights were added as well as some diesel heat and exhaust airbrushed in for added effect.  The foreground contrast was also increased to similate a midday sunlight subject illumination with harsher shadows.

THE OWL GROUP AT JUNCTION CITY The OWL group is somewhat unique in the sense that it does not have a specific locale to call home.  While many members reside in the Milwaukee area, a fair number of others are spread out across Wisconsin, Illinois, even Georgia.  Needless to say, this fact alone makes it rather difficult to get everyone together at one time for a group shot.  After several years to no avail, I took matters into my own hands.   Here is our first FULL group photo at Junction City.   It took several years to get pictures of all of the members in form or fashion, the resulting edit is comprised of a combination of nine total pictures. First, the final product.  The most fundamental problem was getting a decent scene picture with enough "real estate" to paste everyone.  The composition of this picture worked well for what I was attempting.  Its major flaw lies within the fact that it was shot into the sun.  Normally this is a photographical nightmare to make work, however it does work to my advantage as there are no sharp shadows cast (or to be casted) on the subjects in the picture since they are completely contained within their own shadows.  Under these conditions, it is easier to hide subjects that were taken with a different light angle than that of the scene or "false light".  Many of the photographs of the subjects were also taken indoors, therefore they were subjected to more diffuse light, thus no significant shadows.   Unfortunately, many of the "full body" shots that I have of members were taken outdoors, so they do have some rather significant shadows working against me.  Most notably is Paul, on the left side with the shadow created by the brim of his hat.  The human brain is very good about determining the  position of incident light.  Change it even slightly on a subject, and it will readily stand out from everything else in the scene.     The next problem was what to do with people where I lacked a full head to toe picture.  Fortunately, my scene selection saved me.  By positioning people behind objects, such as my pick-up truck and other people, I can conveniently conceal the portions of people that I am missing.  The most notably difficult one was Russ (behind the tailgate of the truck).  His photo came from a scan made by Darin.  I had a little more than three quarters of a bust shot, so I was left to create some legs as well as recreate the rearmost portion of his head.    While the subjects were shot under a variety of light conditions, light color or temperature, is somewhat easy to  make compensations  to without too much trouble.  Flourescent lights typically leave a green tint,  tungsten (incandescent) lights leave a yellow/orange tint, while Metal Halide (HID) lights tend to approximate scattered bluish light from the sky fairly closely.  In each case, I attempted to make adjustments to each added subject to get their color temperature close to the scene picture.  I also made adjustments to the contrast and brightness to "flatten" or accent a subject to blend accordingly with the scene.   Some of the finishing touches to complete the scene  included airbrushing the solar glint visible from the sun hitting the backsides of people's heads and cloning shadows on the grass in front of the subjects.  Both of these features were necessary to reduce "false light" characteristics still visible in the doctored image. Okay, here is the original photo prior to editing.  Consequently,  this is a picture of  the members who were actually there to get their picture taken at this outing.  The whole scene is nowhere near as busy, and there's plenty of room to start squeezing people into the shot. For those who are a little curious as to the origins of the pictures, here is an answer key.  Note that this key was made prior to the subsequent addition of myself to the picture.  My image came from the same photo as that of Tim's.

OWL 3087 LIGHTNING CHASING   Here's yet another shot of where a basic scene can be enhanced with some dramatism in the background. Again, starting with another picture taken at a worksession with a locomotive in  diffuse light and a fairly homogenous background.  Incidentally, the need for such a background is just a matter of  preference.  The background area will be made trasparent by using a freehand tool.  It does help by increasing the contrast between the foreground and background, making it easier to see what to delete and what to keep when working close-up. After a simple delete, I take one of my pictures of a summer evening thunderstorm rolling across the Wisconsin countryside and superimpose my foreground over the top.  Using gamma correction, brightness and contrast, the foreground was darkened.  Additionally, the color was rebalanced somewhat more blue and slightly red to match what would be more closer to ambient light conditions from a twilight sky after sunset.   A couple of features were added to complete the scene.  First, the numberboards were freehand selected, and their brightness and contrast were brought up to higher than original levels to simulate backlighting.  The ground light was added using the airbrush tool, as well as the resulting glint onto the truck.  Finally, the headlights were illuminated.  Simply lightening the headlamps would look false,  to add to some of the realism, I ended up simulating some of falliabilities of a normal camera.  Using the airbrush tool I added the starlight spokes common in photography when photographing very bright point light sources.  The spokes were extended with a simple line, and then smoothed with the retouch tool.  For the final effect, the burn tool was used slightly on the center of the headlights to add a small amount of definition.

OWL RAIL TRAIN For a change of pace, I tried some experimentation with a different scale.   For this scene, I am working in a rather common scale that's about as prototypical as you can get; 1 foot = 12 inches scale.  Here  I took one of my pictures of a Union Pacific rail train sitting in the siding at Port Washington and changed the first unit into OWL colors. The original shot.  Here our unsuspecting SD40-2 sits quietly in the siding at Port Washington, WI, still in UP paint.  Incidentally, this is an ex-CNW (thanks to Mr. Fromm for this tidbit), so wearing different colors is nothing new. After dipping the digital paintbrush in the electronic paint can, ex-UP 3039 has a whole new look.  Fortunately, OWL colors are rather easy to do  compared to others.  Red, being a primary color,  and grey being essentially neutral.  Both colors lend themselves well to being generated without the use of a simple color-replacement tool.   The red in this case was created using a hue-change brush, and the grey was done with a color saturation-change  brush.  Both of these brushes work irregardless of  what color they are applied to, and they both preserve luminescence, so the details are not covered up.   This makes quick work of changing the colors while preserving the incident light on the scene.  In some instances, a simple removal of color for the grey did not yield the correct color since there are yellow and bluish tints with the  scene lighting.   I used the clone brush to borrow colors from other portions of the scene to fix this problem.  I did end air brushing some of the features back onto the unit, but fortunately I was able to keep this activity to a bare minimum.  The logo  on the nose was inserted and adjusted accordingly for the light conditions.  Likewise, the number and lettering on the side was altered for the perspective and pasted in.   The best thing about this paint job was all of my paints are solvent-free and environmentally friendly.