Weathering in Photoshop?

[lenelg]

As a photographer/Photoshop nerd, I was intrigued by Russ Reinberg´s use of printed cardstock in the latest Modeler´s Annual (Further Adventures with Cardstock, p75). For those who are still waiting for their Annual, this is not another case of photographing a wall and embossing the joints between boards. Instead, Uncle Russ cuts the material into strips and applies them board by board.

While the article focuses on the use of cardstock as a construction material, it does no reveal how our Hero acheives the remarkable weathered wood finish printed on the cardstock. Do you still start with a photo of a real wall and cut the strips along the photo´s joint lines, do you start with a photo of a flat, weathered wood surface (hard to acheive without getting surface out of scale), or do you use Photoshop tools to achieve a surface which, when printed on a suitable cardstock, looks so remarkadly real?

[finescalerr]

Part 1.

Arriving at that artwork took years. The initial "photo" is simply a scan of raw stripwood. I cut, pasted, flipped, and reversed the boards until they filled an 8 x 10 inch photo. Think of that as a "package" of stripwood.

I no longer remember exactly how I did it, but by adjusting the contrast and desaturation of all boards and some individual boards, and maybe also by using the Image/Apply Image/Overlay or Multiply commands I managed to create a photo of weathered wood. It probably would have been much easier to brush the raw wood with an India ink and alcohol solution or SilverWood before I scanned it. Anyhow, here is what that basic artwork looks like.

Russ

[finescalerr]

Part 2.

The next phase involved adding a layer of color over the basic artwork and decreasing the opacity to whatever level of weathering seemed appropriate. White was the hardest and I no longer recall exactly what I did to achieve the results. I fooled around with commands under Image and Filters to get a credible weathered white paint appearance. I think I saved the notes somewhere and I'll look for them if anyone wants to try this lunacy.

Here are results of white and colored boards.

Russ

[finescalerr]

Part 3: Peeling paint

It took years of trying fifteen variations of doing the wrong thing before I gave up. Then, one day, I saw a photo of a wall with peeling paint and tried something completely different, simpler and, as it turned out, correct. I downloaded the image, desaturated it, converted it to bitmap (all black, all white), and cleaned up a portion of it so I had a bunch of peel "silhouettes". I saved that as basic art.

Then I restored the art to RGB and colored the black peel images gray-tan. That took about two seconds. Finally, I used the Filters/Render/Fibers command to add "grain" and "texture" to the colored areas. I think that required about 30 seconds, maybe less. The result was strips of peeling I could stretch, resize, edit, or otherwise modify and then paste onto the board artwork.

Here are some images I hope will illustrate what I wrote. Keep in mind, sometimes the peel artwork prints darker than it appears on the image. What you see and may consider washed out actually printed at the proper shade.

Russ

[finescalerr]

I hope that provides a guideline for anyone interested in pursuing this idea. And I hope one of you will figure out ways to improve what I did.

You could use the artwork in a couple of ways: The shortcut method would be to preprint board art, cut it into strips, and use a variety of newer, more weathered, and peeling boards where appropriate. A better method would be to draw plans, place the board artwork over the plans as a layer, weather each board to suit by erasing some color or adding opacity, and then adding additional layers of paint peels exactly where you want them. Then cut out each board and glue it in place on the actual structure.

Bored yet?

Russ

[BKLN]

This right here is yet another proof of creative use of technology. Technology can and will never replace the art of good model building, but a good model builder will always utilize the best available technology to improve his art!

[W.P. Rayner]

Russ:

Another tip: if you use your mask as a brush for the eraser tool, you can actually erase paint from an applied colour layer, exposing the weathered wood layer below. Varying the opacity of the eraser will aid in the effect. After erasing, you could also add a very small drop shadow on the colour layer giving a subtle illusion of paint thickness. You can adjust the lighting angle on the shadow to suit.

Paul

[finescalerr]

I never had much luck with that approach, Paul. But maybe you discovered a trick I don't know. If it's not a lot of trouble, could you post a detailed explanation and an example? -- Russ

[W.P. Rayner]

Russ - PM coming your way.

Paul

[W.P. Rayner]

Russ kindly sent me his resource images to play with and after a few minutes of work, I came up with the following SBS. It is by no means the definitive way to do this, but for anyone with a modest amount of Photoshop experience, it's quite a simple process.

I started off first with Russ' weathered boards as a background image. This image forms the bottom layer in the Photoshop PSD file.



Next, I used his painted green boards, resizing and positioning them carefully as the second layer in the PSD file, on top of the weathered boards.



On looking at them, I felt they looked more like stained than painted boards. There didn't appear to be any depth to the green, so I used the Craquelure filter under Textures to give the paint some volume and depth, making it look like rather poorly applied paint. In the filter window I set Crack spacing at 2, Crack Depth at 1 and Crack Brightness at 0.



Then I addressed Russ' Peel Mask.



As it stands, I thought it to be a little too harsh and crisp so softened it some with a scratchy, grungy Photoshop brush, then converted it to a Brush itself using the Define Brush Preset command in the Edit menu.



Then using the Eraser tool set as a brush and selecting the Peel brush just created, I removed some of the green paint layer, exposing the weathered wood beneath.



Then to complete the effect I added a very slight drop shadow to the green layer, setting the drop shadow blend on Multiply, the light angle at 90 degrees, Distance at 1, Spread at 0, Size at 1, and Contour at Linear Anti-aliased. This added a very subtle drop shadow along the lower edges of the chipped paint.



Probably the most important element in this process is the brush used to "peel" the paint. Here's another example using a grunge brush. Although not particularly suited to representing peeled paint (too many vertical lines and a little soft on many edges), it does illustrate what can be done with different brushes.



It is possible to make a brush from most any image as this third example illustrates, combining several smaller grunge brushes for a worn, chipped effect along with the Westlake logo.



Paul

[Gordon Ferguson]

Paul,

I have almost no idea what any of the words mean but the pictures are great ! Thanks taking the time to explain it all to us Luddites.

Its almost tempting me to buy a version of Photoshop

Out of interest, on the little discussion we have had on "printed brick" could you use the drop shadow on the mortar lines ......... and can you do the same thing on the vertical mortar lines ......... say the main light source is coming from top left ? 

[finescalerr]

Paul, you've given me a couple of good ideas. Thanks!

Gordon, Photoshop has a filter called Lighting Effects where you can position a virtual light source anywhere you want, choose the kind of lamp, and adjust the intensity. I think that would pretty much answer all of your questions.

But Paul came up with a couple of twists I hadn't thought of so maybe he'll also suggest a novel answer to your question.

Russ

[W.P. Rayner]

You're welcome Russ, glad to know there was something useful in all that.

Yes Gordon, you could. The bricks themselves would have to be on a separate image layer from the mortar in order to cast a shadow onto the mortar. The lighting angle is infinitely adjustable so it is entirely conceivable that you could achieve the 3D effect you're after. It would also be possible to add a slight amount of appropriate texture to the brick surfaces to give them a more gritty appearance.

Paul