This tutorial is about taking pictures and making the most out of them using Adobe PhotoShop.

Make sure you take all your pictures with the light coming from the same angle as you are taken the picture from. I find that natural light works best so go outside or as I do use the really big windows to your advantage when it snowing outside.Keep the light coming from behind you.

Place your mini on one or two sloped sheets of white paper like in the picture below:



As you can see the picture is a bit blue and dark. This is because the whitebalance needs to be set. Most camera’s let you set it manually. Without going into that too much you should go in the menu from your camera and select whitebalance there. Use”set balance” and take picture of white sheets without the mini at about the angle and distance that you ared planning to take pictures from. (works best when using a tripod). The whitebalance is now set and camera is ready to go.




As you can see in this picture in which I did not set WB and in which I did.






Also it’s very important you keep the camera absolutely still when you take a picture. You might want to set your timer to take pictures so the camera doesn’t shake when you press the button. This is another option in the menu of your camera.

Take big pictures because you will need to scale them down. This way they will look better and sharper.


Now open picture with PS

Here’s the pic I’ll use. Just a regular mini painted by me some time ago at tabletop standard. Scout R.Naldo from 5th company armed with rocket launcher.He fits into my Spacemarine army which I have pictures of on the forum.

I opened it in RGB mode which is important.

Example 1




Then crop down to about the shape you want to use. Cut away the dead space.

Example2



You then want to check if your levels are good. This is another trick to adjust your whitebalance.

Open Image>adjustments>levels and you should see this:







You see that the whole righthandside of the slide is empty. That’s not good. Move the RHS slider to the left as in the picture below



Your picture should now look better if you hadn't already set the WB on your camera.

Now we are going to slice the scout out of the background.We do this by:

Select the magic wand and set the tolerance to 20. Now click on the white next to the mini and press cntrl+shift+I to inverse select.

It should look like this:



Now we are going to do a few steps after eachother when the picture is “inverse selected”.

Press:
-Select > Modify > Contract... (1 pixel)

Then Press:
-Select > Modify > Feather... (1 pixel)

and then press:
-CTRL+J (to make a copy of this layer)

You have now cut out your mini and you can now make a new layer and place that layer between the two layers you have.

On this Layer you can create anything you want. I have done a few quick ones for your enjoyment. It’s good to use the gradient tool and make a dark background.



Or blue:


Or something a bit special:


I’m just making them up:


An artist is only limited by it’s own imagination:





Make pictures from different angles:


I Hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and my tips are useful to you. I have picked these tips up and came to my own results over the past year. All pictures are mine.

Have a look at my channel to see more. Subscribe if you like and comments are always welcome.


(transfering content from old account)