Sunday, May 2, 2010

Does It Look "Real?"

Take one dollhouse, a couple photos of a city park area, some photo editing software, and voila! You have a somewhat convincing picture of a Victorian house on a lovely estate.

In a slide show where this image will be on the screen for about two to three seconds at the most, I'm hopeful that the viewers won't notice the various edits I made in putting this together.

For instance, the flowering crab trees are a copy and paste of the same tree, flipped and enhanced a little. (The front one on the right is doubled up, in fact.) I cloned the windows on the right-hand side of the house. They were narrowed versions of the windows in the bay window that I copied and pasted. If the overall photo doesn't come across as convincing, well, I at least had fun playing with the software and learning how to use it!

For those of you who are curious about what software I used, it was Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006. It was considerably less expensive than some of the fancy professional editing software packages that I've seen. I occasionally use it to clean up the color in some of my dollhouse photos that I use in this blog.

8 comments:

Caseymini said...

George, it looks good to me. I like the flowering pink thingies in the foreground. They overlap nicely and give depth to the photo. Great work!

Anonymous said...

This may depend on the age of your audience, but most of us under 30 have seen so much Photoshop that we have a keen eye for it. The shadows of the trees, for instance, aren't dynamic. The house is way out of scale in proportion to the trees and the shading isn't consistent with the angle of the light elsewhere. Sorry;)

George the Miniguy said...

Ouch! Well, I have known for a very long time that one should never ask a question if they aren't prepared to hear a negative answer. In spite of that, I wasn't prepared for this answer. Oh well. I guess I have an answer from the 20 somethings...

Michelle said...

Hi George,

I think it's a great idea! You don't have to be a 20 something to know about scale and lighting, etc., when it comes to photo editing. ;o) This is JUST a bit of fun to show a dollshouse against a real life backdrop, and I am glad you showed it.

Michelle :o)

George the Miniguy said...

I like the way you think, Michelle! That is why I edited the photo and put the house on a hill with trees. Actually, the dead give-away that it isn't real isn't the shadows or the trees...it's the skinny house! It would, of course, have more depth to it, if it were a real Victorian home. ;o)
Geo.

Pan said...

I like to experiment with photoshop so found Anonymous' comment helpful. I will be looking at the Microsoft program you mention too.

As for your photo, I like it, I think it is fun.

Pan
http://smallstuff-blogspot.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Hi George, I think there is one thing that will make your picture look even more perfect. Soften the edges of the house. The house is a tad too sharp. (Pun intended)

George the Miniguy said...

That's a good thought, a nice compliment and a good pun all rolled into one comment. Wow! Thank you!
Geo.

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