cities2forest

[doonee]

hello to all ....

By kind recommendation of Kraellin, i move this topic over here from the
software forum. ....

I currently write on the environmental history of Brazil, which also involves the reconstruction of historical and prehistorical landscapes.

Lately, I've been trying to produce some illustrations for this work, using a variety of GIS/Landscape Rendering/3D applications.

Id like to add Photoshop to this arsenal, but Im afraid I still dont know enough about the detailed workings of this great programm, although ive been using it superficially since years (like so many).

To put it in a simplified manner:
I have aerial footage of tropical forests, which I'd like to insert, as skillfully as possible, into wellknown, recognizable motives (stuff known from postcards etc.), in order to revert these 'back in time', and thus create a series of before / after pairs.

I decided look for help with that, since my own humble nibblings with the clone stamp have left me quite dissapointed so far.

First, of all I'd like to ask for some general advice, probably throwing a few keywords at me would already do it.

Then, I can also prepare some examples to post here, and if ne1 would be willing to bear through these pieces of cg-butchery and give me some hints,
id certainly appreciate it.

Regards and thanks to all
doonee

[doonee]

ok, here are two representative examples of what im torturing myself with these days.

example one: ssa25-22.jpg
pasting forest footage over an aerial photograph.
as you can see, all i do is paste in some forest, and then distribute it
with the clone stamp.

example 2: paitest222.jpg
pasting forest footage over a TerraGen render.
here the plan is to use the TG render, pre-textured with material from the forest footage, as a guide for the PS clone-texturing. Textures for rocks etc will come from Terragen itself. Its the trees that are the 'problem' ....

Obstacles, as you can see, are many.

One thing that has been bugging me is the problem of adjusting the faint blue glow that landscapes get on a distance. I was wondering if i could somehow clean that blue glow off the footage, and later add it aain artificially which would increase my choices of what material to use.

Another thing would be to skew the footage appropiately to exactly match the angle of the pic.

So, if ne1 could put me on the right track with this, id be happy as a hog ..

[doonee]

and another example, a different approach, a less representative one, due to the lack of historical photography.

wb 18502.jpg is a rather rare historical pic, from 1850, of a beach in brazil, now located in an urbanized area.

of course it would be cool if i knew how to colorize this thing......

in wb 15002.jpg, i have been messing with the former, removing bridge and houses and adding some vegetation.
im sure this could be done better, and of course, it would be cool if it could be in colour.

so also, here, any hint at all is appreciated.

im aware that these 2 examples are rather 2 different topics, but i didnt want to post all over the place.
thewhat they have in common is that they explain what i mean to do with PS, (i hope.)

There are other approaches involving GIS and 3D applications too.

rgds and thanks for the attention ...
d

[doonee]

i just noticed that the pics i attached are probably too small ...
if you need bigger ones to able to comment on them, plz let me know ...

d

[Kraellin]

yup. need larger. standard size around here is generally 800 x 600. it's not written in concrete or anything, but it's an easy browser and paint program size.

Craig

[doonee]

k, here are the pics again, 800x600

plz note that in 'paitest.jpg', the Terragen 'vegetation' in the foreground has been replaced with the same material that was the source of the texture. It stops shortly before the hills, and id like it to cover the entire area, and 'behave' correctly at slopes and depressions.

in ssa.jpg, i did not worry about the borders of the forest at this (experimental) stage, i was more interested in trying to mimick the elevations of the underlying landscape, and creating the impression of depth.

note that my technique is (sadly) rudimentary. i just paste and clone and erase, cause thats all i know to do. i would be curious to learn how i could improve my technique. I heard about some tricks that can be done with layers for atmospheric effects, and selfmade brushes, and what not, but i know -0- about that (yet) ....

regards and thanks
d

[Kraellin]

ok, let's take one image at a time here. you've got 4 posted, so let's just cut this down to one for the time being.

in your terragen picture, you've already done some of the work, yes? it might help here to show a before and after of the work. that would give us a better idea of where you want to go with this. i get the overall idea; you're doing a before civilization and an after. ok, that's fine.

regarding the hills and trees, wouldnt a number of those hills/mountains be bare of trees natually, at least the higher up you go?

the blue glow can be reduced or removed a number of ways. i did a little on the terragen picture just to test. i simply made a mask of the area i wanted to affect and then turned it into a selection and applied the fast fix filter plugin to lower the blue a bit. you could also just make a freehand selection and do the same.

you could also make a new raster layer and on the new layer paint a green or yellow, then just lower the opacity of this layer to tint the underlying layer.

you could also maybe just add an adjustment layer for curves and adjust the blue curve to reduce the blue in the picture, or combine that with a mask/selection and do just selective areas.

now, before i go any further, if the problem is not knowing all the things you can do with photoshop, then the thing to do is, study photoshop things like layers and masks are the meat and potatoes of photoshop. it may seem pretty complex and it can be, but by taking just one thing at a time and learning that, you can simplify it down pretty quickly. i dont see anything you've asked about that cant be done in photoshop or another graphic editor. so, the trick is knowing what you need and knowing how it works. and for that, you're going to have to invest some time in learning photoshop.

now, in all that i'm not saying we cant help you out here. we most likely can. but, let's take one image and one or two things you want to do with that image and narrow this down a bit. your cloning looks fine; so, what's next?

Craig

[Racc Iria]

From Kraellin:
the blue glow can be reduced or removed a number of ways. i did a little on the terragen picture just to test. i simply made a mask of the area i wanted to affect and then turned it into a selection and applied the fast fix filter plugin to lower the blue a bit. you could also just make a freehand selection and do the same.

you could also make a new raster layer and on the new layer paint a green or yellow, then just lower the opacity of this layer to tint the underlying layer.

you could also maybe just add an adjustment layer for curves and adjust the blue curve to reduce the blue in the picture, or combine that with a mask/selection and do just selective areas.

In Terragen, it would be a lot easier to get rid of the blue glow by just turning off atmospheric haze, or setting it to a neutral color.

--Racc

[doonee]

let's just cut this down to one for the time being.

sure, craig.
i posted these 4 pics to give you an overall impression on what im trying to do.

it might help here to show a before and after of the work.

coming up

regarding the hills and trees, wouldnt a number of those hills/mountains be bare of trees natually, at least the higher up you go?

thats correct.
whatever appears as bare rock in this particular pic, is naturally bare due to climate, slope etc.. generally speaking.
the idea with using terragen, in this case, is to have it supply a guide to the landscape, and to have it do the bare rock whenever its appear (in the sample pic, the rocks are still untextured.)
Thus, what you see as bare rock in this pic, wil also be bare rock in the final.
The addition is the arboreal vegetation in the depressions.
This particular landscape has been degraded by mining activities, and the valleys are now competely bare of arboreal vegetation.
(i could also post a foto of how it looks there today, if you like).

When i was talking about 'correct behaviour' on slopes etc, i meant that
i was trying to make the texturing follow the smaller ups and downs in the valley areas.

study photoshop things like layers and masks are the meat and potatoes of photoshop.

obviuosly, thats what i came for ...
ive merely been winging it with this great programm
for too many years, and this is a good oportunity to smarten up a bit.
im already all over your tutorial section.

the next thing, i would guess, would be to scale the cloned material in order to use it on the areas in the back, ....

thnks craig
d

[doonee]

racc

sorry, perhaps i havent been too clear on what i meant.
i meant that my aerial *footage* comes with strong distant glow,
which has so far limited my choice of material for cloning ....

in terragen, on the other hand, taking the distant glow out of the atmo
often gives us an ugly white line aroudn the horizon. usually, that can be encountred by rendering twice, once with glow and once without.

in this case however, the headache comes from the blue gradient in the
forest footage to be added. (very much the case in ssa.jpg)

thanks for all the attention and patience
d

[Racc Iria]

Ahh, now I get it.

I thought Kraellin was trying to remove the haze from an image rendered solely by Terragen. And I was thinking why go through all that when you could just turn if off.

Nevermind. I understand now... I think.

--Racc

[Kraellin]

doonee,

ok, i think i'm following all this

yes, you could re-scale the vegetation for the far away stuff. that shld work fine. just remember to blur it a bit also.

and the valleys are now competely bare of arboreal vegetation.
(i could also post a foto of how it looks there today, if you like).

yes, please.

when working with depressions, i'd generally recommend starting at the lowest point and furthest away. work toward the foreground and up the back of the depression first. as you move forward and up, you simply clone over what's already there as needed and wanted.

there's also another way to do all this if you want to lessen how much you clone. you could make a new layer with nothing but samples of vegetation, or make several layers each with its own type of vegetation. using a hide-all mask over these layers, you could simply turn the black mask into a white mask where you wanted the various vegetations to show through on the original picture.

or, you could make separate images of all the various vegetation types and clone from there onto the original.

or, you could cut and paste whole selections of vegetations into the original, though that may be a bit rough and not match up very well.

you do want to be a bit careful with your cloning. you've got areas in your original that in shadow from the various hills, so you'll want to match those areas up with shadowed vegetation also. or, you could overwrite shadows onto these areas with various methods.

from what i've seen so far, you're doing fine. if that original terragen was mostly denuded of forest, then the picture you posted is really quite good. same with the picture where you're putting in all that dark green forestation over the urban area.

and as for that distant glow, you could just clone vegation over it and add the 'glow' back in later with some simple masks and color balancing/mixing.

Craig

[doonee]

if that original terragen was mostly denuded of forest, then the picture you posted is really quite good.

the actual area today is totally denuded.
however, I textured the terragen render green where i intend to paste footage. (using footage colours as a base).
so far, ive proceeded to the foothills of the first steeper slopes.
from there to the back, its all the texture of the terragen render.

as for that distant glow, you could just clone vegation over it and add the 'glow' back in later with some simple masks and color balancing/mixing.

hm yea, this glow stuff still throws me off quite a bit....

most of the footage i had choosen comes with some kind of a distant haze.
(sorry racc, i guess i didn not explain that vey well earlier on)

without beeing able to properly remove and add that haze at will, my choice of material to clone is limited, since i cant clone (scaled down) darker stuff from the front of the footage next to lighter stuff in the back of the pic.

One way to get rid of the haze so far was a plugin called Metrix
(http://www.panix.com/~jnr/), which does rid you of the haze but also
of quite some detail as well. I also used that trying to adjust differently coloured forest footage in order to use it inside the same picture (for example in ssa.jpg).

Then, to get the haze back, i experimented by creating a lightblue gradient semi transparent layer and placing it over the entire pic, but i didnt like that very much.

Matching the natural haze of the underlying picture is another issue.
One thing i did at first was to try to have the terragen render haze match the haze on the footage, but that did not work too well.

Non-matching angles of footage forests and base-picture is another thing.
(not so much with terragen, since you can render a picture that mimicks the angle of the footage)

you do want to be a bit careful with your cloning.

Surely i do want to.
Note that it stops where it gets harder to do.
The cloning in the front of the pic is easy.
It even shows entirely cloned small hillsides which simply cover the terragen render. (I was actually experimenting with skewing the footage, and then liked the results and kept them)
In mid and far distance, however the cloning has to match slopes and depressions etc, and, as you point out, also shadowed areas.

when working with depressions, i'd generally recommend starting at the lowest point and furthest away.

good one ...

you could overwrite shadows onto areas with various methods.

sounds like a very good one too, but leaves me clueless

using a hide-all mask over these layers, you could simply turn the black mask into a white mask where you wanted the various vegetations to show through on the original picture.

again, no idea ..

Anyways, all you saw here are quite 'ad hoc' experiments, just to get started, some shots in the dark to see if i can extensively use Photoshop in this project.
And i think that a whole lot can be done.
One has to start somewhere, right ?

What strongly speaks for Photoshop, in my opionion, is the following:
One visual effect i wish to create with all this is RECOGNITION.
the viewer is suppoed to recognize the degraded area beneath the forest.
(thats something which the intuition of the brazilian audience will be
the final judge of).
i have already produced some beautiful renders of paradisical scenery in VUE, but they dont cut it, because theres no immediate way an unprepared viewer will recognize the location between all that greenery, even though i had used high resolution heightmaps and made sure to include as many geographic features as i could. All my test audience saw was beaches and forests, which could have been *anywhere*.
Ideally, ive noticed when showing these pics to people, i must work with a series of before/after pairs, which *exactly* match in POV, angle and all, except for the orginal vegetation.
Thus, manipulating existing photography of well known motives is not a scaperoute but a prime solution, since it naturallay implies exactly matching POVs.
The only trouble is that i dont know Photshop.

I'm very happy I came here, because you're doing the right thing by throwing the proper keywords at me, and thats exactly what i was looking for.


Please, if you're up to it, if you know a tutorial concerning the subjects you mention, throw the link in with your comments ...

thanks again, craig
(picture following shortly)

[Racc Iria]

doonee...

Can you post the DEM image you were using, the matching Terragen render, and the photo you are trying to match it to. I'd be interested to see them all at once.

I'm assuming they aren't the ones you've already posted since the perspectives and terrain don't seem to match. Or am I missing something?

--Racc

[doonee]

racc
which one ?