Cool Diorama Photo Look Trick

[nirvana]

That's really neat Eskimo, I thought the first picture was a diorama as well.

[Debonair]

zOMG where'd u get all those kewl toy boats?

[Hornet33]

Originally posted by eskimo2
You were?!  Why?  I was born in Cordova; left when I was a baby.  My father was the minister of the Baptist Church from about 1962 to 1966.  My family was there during the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964 (9.5 Moment Magnitude) I’ve only been back once or twice.

This picture was taken in Homer Alaska this past summer.

Small world huh?? I was there for 2 weeks for the Coast Guard. I was installing a brand new Electronic Charting and Navigation System on the Cutter Sycamore (Bouy Tender) that's based out of there. Was there during the first Salmon opener of the season. Not sure if your familiar with the Cordova Rose Lodge but that's where we stayed at. Hung out at the Alakan Hotel and Bar most of our free time. I missed the trip to Homer a couple of months later. That picture though looks just like the harbor in Cordova if your standing in the parking lot of the Western Family Store, that's why I asked.

[eskimo2]

[moot]

nice one Eskimo

[Maverick]

Eskimo, Very nice effect there!

[JB88]

Originally posted by eskimo2

cedar point?

[eskimo2]

Originally posted by JB88
cedar point?

Geauga Lake from the Americana Ferris Wheel in September of 2005.

[tapakeg]

Is that done with lenses on camera or photoshop?

If photoshop, how do you do it?

[JB88]

Originally posted by eskimo2
Geauga Lake from the Americana Ferris Wheel in September of 2005.

very well done.  

[eskimo2]

Originally posted by tapakeg
Is that done with lenses on camera or photoshop?

If photoshop, how do you do it?

You can buy an $1,100 tilt-shift lens for a Canon SLR or…

How to make a picture look like a diorama:

In the Homer Harbor picture I resized the picture to 1024x768 and saved the picture as a bitmap.  
The next step was to create 4 more copies, each progressively blurry/softened.  I named them the numeric soften setting for my program (3, 6, 10 & 26).

Now the rest of the work is in MS Paint.  For the sharpest picture I deleted all areas that were out of the focal zone.  (Set neon green as your eraser color by right clicking on it.)

In the picture below I used the spray paint feature in Paint to make the sharp/soft zones blend.  In hind sight I don’t think this was such a good idea.  I had to go back with a soften brush because it was pixilated when layered.

1


Note: online tutorials will show you that you can simply soften the top and bottom of the picture.  While this will produce a general effect, this approach is wrong!  Unless the picture is of flat ground with nothing tall in it, parts of the picture will not look right.  You need to select everything that is at a certain distance range to be in focus.  If there is a tall pole, building or tree in the focus range, it all needs to be in focus.  

Figure out what zones would be slightly out of focus.  This should be both a little closer to the camera and further away.

3


Repeat for the next zone:

6


And for the next zone I decided to blur/blend the mountains together.  

10


The last zone will only show the maroon/grey boat in the foreground.

26


Now we’re 98% done.  Open all 5 pictures.  On picture 10, select all + copy, go to picture 26 and paste.  Right click on neon green and select transparent background.  Go to 6, select all + copy; paste on 26.  Do the same with pictures 3 then 1.  Save picture 26, reopen it with a program that makes decent JPEGs and save it as a .jpg.  With this picture I used a crude softening brush in MS Photo editor to touch up a few of the layer merges.  Spray paint was not a big help here.  

Note: .Never save a picture as a JPEG in Paint.

[jigsaw]

Easier way is to use Photoshop's Lens Blur filter with a gradiant map, then mask off details.

[Sandman]

My first attempt...

[Mustaine]

there's one out there of hoover dam that is amazing

[moot]

Sort of off topic, YMMV