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Just started up a new blog and came up with a cheap green screen alternative for taking nice pictures.

That being said I would appreciate If you guys checked out my blog at http://waaghgames.blogspot.com , a little empty right now but I'll be posting a bunch of stuff.

Anyways first find your self a piece of green paper/Foam Sheet/anything flat, bendy, and most importantly... green.



Now lay it up against a wall so it covers the part where the wall and floor meet.
Here's the picture I took.



Take it into your editing program of choice, I'm using Photoshop. Do a little green screen magic and your done!

Awesome. Goimg to joananne fabrics today for materials. Thanks!

OR you can just use a white background!

Capitansolstice wrote:OR you can just use a white background!

You could try that, if you don't have access to a photo editing program. You will however get darker parts in you picture. on the background. If you don't mind that then yeah It would be pointless to do a green screen.


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The Grundel wrote:Awesome. Goimg to joananne fabrics today for materials. Thanks!

You might be able to find foam sheets from Benjamin Frankilins for cheaper, however you can get bigger pieces from a fabric store.

Hmm, I see

Capitansolstice wrote:OR you can just use a white background!

The problem with using a white background is that white tends appear within the area you want to cut out, in the form of highlights. When you try to remove the background you will also end up cutting holes in your object where the highlights were, and then it will look messed up and ugly if you put it on a different coloured background.

Ideally you want the background to be a colour that doesn't appear anywhere within the object you want to cut out, that way you can just drop a range of colours and you're done. Green and Blue screens are popular with TV and film studios, probably because they are easy to distinguish from flesh tones. Obviously if your army is green, you probably want to avoid a green screen.

Cheap and Easy Green Screen Alternative

What is alternative about it? It's a green screen.

Smacks wrote:

Capitansolstice wrote:OR you can just use a white background!

The problem with using a white background is that white tends appear within the area you want to cut out, in the form of highlights. When you try to remove the background you will also end up cutting holes in your object where the highlights were, and then it will look messed up and ugly if you put it on a different coloured background.

The general idea would be that if you're after a white background, using an actual white background means you don't have to digitally remove it. You can just colour balance it and remove any shadows on the background by playing with the grey and white shadings.


The problem with using a white background is more one of contrasts. Using a white background tends to result in the subject being darker (see GW Oz's Golden Demon photos for a perfect example of this in action) which can require a certain amount of jiggery-pokery to correct. Black backgrounds give the reverse problem, with the subject often winding up washed out or over-bright.

Hmm, I see where this is going. I use picasa to edit my photo coloring because of my too-dark white background

This explains quite a bit about why my model photo's always turn out funky... I gotta play with the contrast, and possibly hit up some green-screen so that I can help to adjust the contrast and color balances....

Thank you guys!

Just make sure you get a color that you don't have in your model, even with the green you may have to be careful with the black/grey areas