| Lil Pixel Sir |
| 53. Photo Fighting Oct 29th 2014, 01:29  So hey. This post will be a little different. I get a lot of people asking me to take pictures for them, or asking me what settings I use blah blah blah etc. I always feel guilty when I don't have the time or it takes me weeks to mess around with the photo I took of them. SO.. with that in mind. I thought I would do a series on things that I do to mess around with photos. Starting at basic, to my own limit. I don't claim to be a good photographer at all, 8 out of 10 are probably better than me lol! But at least if you are unfamiliar with SL photography this might give you a starting point... you can over take me and I will be paying for your work! So to begin with I will quickly share what I am wearing :) Style NotesHair - Truth - Tom Scarf - Little Closet - Cable Knit Scarf Mustard Dipped (gacha item) Sweatshirt - des lunes - All the Cats Sweater Jeans - Pearly's - Camo Jeans Shoes - Minuet - Fringe Boots Light Brown Pet - Oopsie - Imber Bird Ivory Charcoal Stripped Ears - Cute Bytes - Ring Pierced Ears (one naked and one pierced worn) Pose - Little Moments - Simplicity 4 Ok, so onto the tutorial!  I am going to talk you through just taking a picture using SL windlight settings today. Which is exactly what I do with all the posts on Lil Pixel Sir. The only other editing I ever do for blog posts is cropping and sometimes merging two pictures together. Tip: Make sure to take as high a resolution picture as you can. I like to have my snapshot settings when saving to disk set to a constrained dimension where the width is at 3000, but this is up to you. Another thing you could do is go to your Advanced menu, and make sure that 'High Rez Snapshot' is ticked. So to start with set up your shot. My pose is all selected and I have arranged my camera angles to how I want to take the shot. I like to try to make sure, when I am taking a picture outside that no objects behind me are sticking out of my head. It may seem like a small thing but it can be very odd later when you realize you seem to have a boot on your head or an odd crown of branches. The other thing I take note of is color, I make sure what where I am standing what I am wearing does not blend in too much with what is behind me. Like the sweatshirt is a darker color than the stairs and its obvious I am not wearing the stairs (not a trend yet I don't think). When your colors are too close in shade you can blend in and disappear, Generally I set up the shot using lower graphics as for me it can get irritating changing angles when I'm on ultra or high. In the picture you can see I have brought up the preferences window. In the graphics tab change your level to High or Ultra depending on what your computer can handle (normally I take my pictures on ultra but as most people seem to use high, i am working with that). Make sure that your Object LOD is set to its highest (4) and that you have 'Advanced Lighting Model' and 'Ambient Occlusion' checked.  Still on the graphics tab, I move along to Hardware settings. This step is optional, your pictures will look great without this but its something I personally like to do. Locate the drop down box for 'Antialiasing' (warning this may crash you). Select the highest number from the drop down list that your computer can handle. I will be setting mine to 16.  Now go to the next tab in your graphics preferences. Here look for the slider near the bottom for 'Quality of the Shadows'. I like to set mine as high as it can go, but fiddle around a bit and set yours to what won't crash you :)  And to the last tab in graphics preferences. This is another optional step, one I like to use for outdoor shots where the focus is not so much the background. It makes a subtle difference to your shots and makes your focus really pop. Turn on the check-box called 'Enable Depth of Field'. When selected move the sliders around to get the effect you want. This will blur what is behind your cameras focus as much or as little as you want. I tend to mostly use the top two sliders. Tip: If you do NOT save your graphics changes but instead MINIMIZE the window, it will be easier to go back to your defaults when you are finished by selecting cancel :)  My preference window is now minimized and moved out of my way. Go to your quick preferences and select the windlight of your choice. I am using 'Phototools - Dorm Light1'. Once chosen go to World - Environment Editor - Sky Presets - Edit Preset.  This is my favorite part of the whole process! I get to mess around with light! Here you are able to change the direction of the light, adjust the gama, time of day, cloud levels, tint.. everything. I recommend if you are new to windlight to have a good play around with everything and just see what you can come up with. For the purpose of this tutorial though, here is what I did. I have moved the slider for the time of day and also the 'Est angle', these things affect the direction my light is going. Something to look out for is shadows and light on the face. If too much light floods your face you will look a little like a glow worm and if the shadows are in the wrong place they can make unflattering jagged pools of light right where you dont want them. To eliminate this a little bit I have darkened the tint for 'S/M Colr' and lightened the 'Ambient'. To get the affect of glow on the right side of the image I have adjusted the slider for 'SG.Size'. Again this is something to tweak to your own personal preferences :)  So here it is.. uncropped and pretty. Now if you wanted to you could stop here, take it into your photo editing software and crop it to the size you want it. But today I'm taking you further. This is just a quick blogger tip for those of you who want to try it :)  So... yea I could do this on a white background.. but I like to be out and about in the world. If you are doing it just in a photo studio you can do the same method. Firstly.. DO NOT CHANGE YOUR CAMERA ANGLE. Don't zoom in or out, side to side, anything. Stay exactly where you are! However, take note of where your avatar was in your first image. Making sure that when you are standing next to where they might be, you will have a gap between. For me my guide was the door. I wanted to make sure that my second image was taken with the avatar's hand under the line of the doorframe (using the handle as a guide of roughly where). Change your pose (or not.. I didn't), angle your pose stand around a bit (yes you need to be on a pose stand to do this). Change none of your settings at all.  Here we go, finished picture two. Now into photoshop if you have it. If you don't and are using something similar, many of what I mention will be translatable to your program but may have different terms.  Bring in both your pictures to your photo editing software. The first thing that I always do is change the images height to match the height of whatever photo size I will be doing. For my purposes I normally use 1024 and do a square image but yours may be different. Make sure that both your images are the same size and that you are constraining proportions.  Go to one of your images, it really does not matter which one. Crop as close as you can get to the avatar itself. One tip is to watch where your ground shadows are when you take the pictures. I normally avoid ground shadows when I know I will be doing a picture like this, or make it so that the shadows are directly behind/in front of the avatars.  Now you want to merge the two images. So simply slide your cropped image (click and drag) onto your other image.  Move your new layer (previously the cropped image) into position. If you are in photoshop doing this it is easiest for this to make sure that 'snap' is turned on. Go to, View - Snap. Then when you move the image it will snap to the edges when you get close enough to them. When this is complete and you are happy with the positions of things you need to 'merge all visable'. You can do this by right clicking on the layer (this is shown highlighted blue) and selecting 'merge visable' or you can go to Layer - Merge Visible. Alternately you can flatten the image, it really does not matter. You just want this to be one image.  Final Step! Yaay! Open up a new blank image (File - New) and select the dimensions that you want your final product to be. Remember to make your HEIGHT whatever you made the height of your raw images. When complete move your merged image onto the new blank one (click and drag). Now all you have to do is move it around to where you like it and save it! Your done! Hopefully you found this helpful :) If you have any questions please ask in the comments for this post and I will do my best to answer. |
