Lego Photography

LEGO Photo Editing

You have a great photo... but it lacks impact and seems flat. How do you make it more real and pop out of the page?

Ninety percent of making an exciting shot is taking a good picture in the first place. Use a low aperture setting to provide a shallow depth of field in order to make background removal easier. Also keep your shot as blur-free as possible by using a tripod or bracing yourself on an object when you shoot. (Another technique is to use the cameras built in timer to avoid shake when the shutter button is depressed). Try to use natural lighting to eliminate film grain.

Once you've done these things, it's time to spice up the photo to make it more interesting. In this tutorial, we will be showing how to remove the background of the image and replace it more interesting one. We will also be adding some "Special effects" to the image to make it more alive and real.

On all of the images, you may click on the thumbnail to get a larger image.

The image to the left is the original source image. As you can see, it was taken in natural sunlight using a white towel as a backdrop. This is a great shot, crisp and in focus.Our first task is to remove this background so that we can replace it with something more interesting than a white beach towel.

Opening the file in Adobe Photoshop, we select the pen tool.

Using the pen tool, we carefully trace around the outline of the LEGO model using Bezier curves. Accuracy doesn't matter that much since we are working at such a high resolution. The main purpose is to get a nice smooth shape that is reasonably close to the real outline of the model.

The completed path with all of the control points visible (hollow squares). Note that we were careful to trace the outlines of any "holes" in the image, such as the space between the tail wings.

From the Paths floating palette, we click on the Load Path as Selection button. This will transform the path into a selection. I typically feather the selection 2 pixels to slightly blur the edge between the model and the background (Selection menu, Feather).

Now that the background is selected, I cut the selection and paste it in its own layer. I then delete the old background layer. This gives me a new layer with the model extracted from the background. The gray squares you see in the background indicate that the background layer is transparent.

You have a great photo... but it lacks impact and seems flat. How do you make it more real and pop out of the page?

Photography Index

Next Page

	The image to the left is the original source image. As you can see, it was taken in natural sunlight using a white towel as a backdrop. This is a great shot, crisp and in focus.Our first task is to remove this background so that we can replace it with something more interesting than a white beach towel.
	Opening the file in Adobe Photoshop, we select the pen tool.
	Using the pen tool, we carefully trace around the outline of the LEGO model using Bezier curves. Accuracy doesn't matter that much since we are working at such a high resolution. The main purpose is to get a nice smooth shape that is reasonably close to the real outline of the model.
	The completed path with all of the control points visible (hollow squares). Note that we were careful to trace the outlines of any "holes" in the image, such as the space between the tail wings.
	From the Paths floating palette, we click on the Load Path as Selection button. This will transform the path into a selection. I typically feather the selection 2 pixels to slightly blur the edge between the model and the background (Selection menu, Feather).
	Now that the background is selected, I cut the selection and paste it in its own layer. I then delete the old background layer. This gives me a new layer with the model extracted from the background. The gray squares you see in the background indicate that the background layer is transparent.