Sunday, November 12, 2006

Fake model photography

So this year's online trend in digital photography is photos of real places that look like pictures of models. I've thought it was neat since I first saw some of the photos, but I thought I couldn't do it because I don't have a tilt-shift lens.

But then yesterday Wil Wheaton linked to a photo of his that someone called vertigo25 had done up fake model style. From that page I found a link to a mirror of a tutorial on how to replicate the effect in Photoshop.

The result isn't quite as cool as the real thing, but it's still interesting. So I tried it out.


This is really the best I was able to come up with. You can see my other attempts here.

As you can tell, there are some issues with photos with large height variations. It's kind of difficult to find the best focal area. Still, it was a fun experiment. Maybe I'll eventually figure out how to do it better, or take a photo that is better suited for the process.

(vertigo25 used a different technique to create his mask, and linked to this example. It looks like he traced around the tree and bridge to keep them in the foreground. That would probably work better with the heights I'm dealing with.)

5 comments:

Heather said...

Oh that is so cool! I haven't seen that before. I'm just learning how to use Photoshop (nothing like being forced to teach it unexpectedly that will really light a fire under you to learn it), and I'm going to have to check that out. It looks like some kind of 1950s mini diorama of what the future will look like. Good job!

Christopher said...

Wow, that really does look like a model rather than the real thing. I've notice that in a few online pics of Japan (I think Japanwindow or Sushicam had a few pics like that, I can't remember which tho) and they did a real good job since I thought it was a little model of the city pic they took rather than the real thing.

Yours looks really good btw, I couldn't even tell that it was just after looking at a tutorial that you did some of those, keep up the good work ^_^

Anonymous said...

kewl
M

Anonymous said...

Cool. I saw an article on that a little while back and thought it neat but didn't know there was a tutorial out for it too. I just need a cheaper alternative to Photoshop if I'd want to persue fake model photography though :-P

Heather Meadows said...

Or a cheap tilt-shift lens!! :>