One of the best things about digital photography is that it is possible to do all kinds of things with the image AFTER it has been photographed, by manipulating the image in the computer. In another article we will look briefly at special effects while in this article we will look at some of the tools that can be used to correct an image.
Of course, while it is possible to make all kinds of corrections in the computer, it is generally a lot less work to avoid the problems in the first place. For example, while it is possible to 'paint out' clutter from the background of an image it is usually easier to remove the clutter BEFORE taking the picture i.e. by choosing an uncluttered backdrop. This is especially true with terrain photography where we are generally working in a controlled environment. See Overlord's 'Studio'.
There are times however when the clutter is difficult to avoid. This low angle shot of Dlmos' Modular Hex Boards has a rather nice dining chair as it's focal point and while it can be argued that the chair could have been moved, it would have been rather more difficult to remove the central vertical member from the window.
Half an hour in PaintShop Pro and we'd not only shifted the furniture but we'd restyled Dlmos' window and created the image below (which appears in our archives). In a nutshell, we used the 'Clone Tool' which allowed use to 'paint' colour and 'texture' from one area of a picture into another. In this case an area of windows that just had blinds was painted over the chair and vertical member.
Okay, so it's not perfect and now that we've pointed it out you can see that there's something odd going on with that window. However you probably wouldn't have noticed it if we hadn't mentioned it because you'd have been looking at the terrain; which is of course the whole idea.
The cleanup job on the photo below of Neal Crankshaw's Missile Silos and Bunker was a lot simpler.
Below we have the original image and you can see how distracting the background was before it was cleaned up by a simply painting it out. Again, it might have been possible to remove some of the clutter before taking the photo, but there is no way he could have removed all of it.
Well no, we don't think it is. It would of course be possible to use similar techniques to cover up errors in our terrain modelling but what would be the point in posting images, and receiving praise for, models that we didn't actually have the skill to create? If we were going to do that we may as well post pictures of terrain made by experts and claim to have made them ourselves. What we are talking about here is tidying up images and correcting the photography in order to show our models at their best. If that is cheating then so is photographing them in anything other than natural light. Then again, perhaps that would be cheating as most of the time the terrain will be used indoors under artificial light?