Rails and Trails Imaging
Model RR - Creating Photo Backgrounds
Background for Bear Mountain Logging Camp
Leadville, Colorado Mines and Mountains
This was my original panorama stitched together from four vertical digital frames. It is 36 inches wide at 300ppi. I cropped it to 13" high, which was the portion of the image I wanted to use. The problem is my wall required an image that was 72" wide or long.
I flipped the image to evaluate the possibilities of stitching them into a scene of a whole valley. I tinkered until I discovered not aligning them perfectly and doing some blending where they overlapped seemed to work. After cloning and changing some clouds, I had an acceptable image that is now 72" wide x 13" high at 300ppi. I began adding some near-background trees and the transition to a snow scene (see final image above).
I searched my photo files for all kinds of fir, evergreen, aspen and snow covered trees that I could cut out add add into my scene.
These are some of the trees that I used. Each one is saved as an individual image file. I can add these to any image as separate layers and re-size them to suit the scale. The separate tree layers can be moved and overlapped to create a cluster.
This shows the final installation of the background at Bear Mountain, which will be the scene of a logging camp with a spar tree for loading logs.
My backgrounds are printed with an Epson Color Stylus R2880 using Ultra Chrome pigmented inks on 13" wide Premium Luster roll paper.
If I flipped the original panorama and stitched it again, I could get to 44" long by 4" high. This is the 44" version. Due to the clouds and the features of the landscape, I needed to due some serious cloning for disguise. Adding the near-background trees would also help to make it look different. But I still did not have the required 80" length. So, I doubled it again by stitching two of these sections together (see final image above). Now I had 88", which was more length than I needed.
You can see the finished installation The bare wood strip will have terrain and foreground trees placed to enhance the perception of distance. The close-up detail shows the snow scene transition on the left.
This the finished background. It had to be very long and narrow, 80" wide x 4" high. My original stitched up panorama could only be cropped to 22" wide x 4" high at 150ppi. I had to lower the resolution to 150ppi from 300ppi in order to get the 22". That will be acceptable resolution but don't go any lower. The length still needed to be almost four times longer. I also needed some near-background trees to match the foreground trees placed on the layout with a transition to snow on the left side.
This is my final background which I cropped again to 72" wide x 12.5" high. I started the transition to a snow scene on the far right. I even added some snow in the background mountains. I added near-background trees, which combined with foreground trees on the layout will enhance the perception of distance.
