changing clothes!

[jonnybloo]

Hi, first post, I should explain im a novice with Photoshop, just eager to learn new tools and techniques but in need of some guidance.

I want to be able to take a photo of a toy i.e. lego minifig or any small toy, lego is probably "cleaner", and then change the appearance (purely for the photo - i'm not talking decals etc).

So if I had a photo of a plain yellow minifig, how could I go about adding a tshirt / top of my choice ? Presumably I need to draw it rather than use another photo to keep that toy look.

On a side note but related, is it also possible/feasible to change the facial expressions ?

Thanks in advance!

 

[IamSam]

Hello jonnybloo and welcome to PSG. (Great username!)

I think this is possible. Why don't you post a photo of the yellow mini figure and the t-shirt you would like to place on it and let us see what can be done and how we can help you in learning how to accomplish the effect.

 

[jonnybloo]

Hi there

ok great, thank you for the help

I havent got the pictures myself yet - light tent ordered yesterday. I can point to some links to show you what i mean - if thats allowed? if not please let me know and i will delete

Heres an example for the figure:



and an example i guess would be a football shirt, though im not sure of drawing it rather than merging a real shirt would provide a more constant effect and match the toy ?



cheers!

 

[Rich54]

I did this very quickly using the football shirt you provided, which actually made life difficult because the shirt is tailored for someone with the physique of an athlete, whereas your Lego man has the physique of someone who spends most of his day on the sofa drinking beer. Since you say you are a novice, the first step would be to find an image of a shirt that more closely matches the shape of the Lego toy, which will make things a lot easier. Regarding changing the facial expression, in this case it was easiest to simply paint yellow over the old face and then draw a (not very good) new face over that. With other Lego images, that may or may not be so easy.

I used several techniques here, but most of the hard work involved drastically changing the shape of the shirt to fit the toy. In no particular order, I used Scale, Distort and Warp (all within Edit>Transform) and also the Liquify tool. Once the shirt was reasonably the same size and shape as the Lego man, then the main technique used was a layer mask, which enabled me to to expose the Lego man's neck and left hand (our right in the picture), which would otherwise have been covered up by the shirt. I also added a drop shadow to the shirt and some shading along the sides to attempt a bit of realism (or as much realism as a Lego toy wearing expensive sports clothes might deserve.)

 

[Rich54]

Forgot to mention... I had to extract the shirt from its background. Ordinarily the Quick Selection tool would work fairly well, but in this case the background was pretty much the same color as the shirt, so the Quick Selection tool had difficulty identifying the edges. I decided to use the Pen tool, which takes a bit of practice to get used to, but generally allows much crisper and precise selections.

 

[IamSam]

Great minds. I was working on the same thing.

Almost word for word of what Rich did. I used quick mask to isolate the shirt, but it may have gone faster using the Pen Tool.

I was working rather fast as well, so it's not perfect.

 

[jonnybloo]

Sam / Rich. That is superb thank you both so much. Much more realistic than I was expecting given like you say they are different shapes and subjects.

I guess it all depends on what toy photo o go for. I'm assuming it's best face on. Though if the toy is angled I could use all the tools you described to try and also angle the shirt?

With regards to the expression. If I paint yellow how do you get around the shading? For example the original looks lit from the front. The yellow darkens as it curves around the head. So if I used yellow from the middle and painted across I may get a brighter yellow that doesn't blend properly. Does that make sense?

Thank you again. Really helpful stuff and gives me a basis to get started and see if I can replicate.

 

[Rich54]

If the toy is angled, but the image of the shirt is not, then it creates the extra problem of making the shirt look like it has the correct perspective, especially if it contains lettering. This can all be done, but as you are a novice you may want to start off where both images look like they were photographed from the same perspective.

Regarding the shading around the yellow face... you are absolutely right that this is a concern. In this particular case the existing face sat mostly within a uniform shade of yellow, so I was careful to paint as little yellow as possible to not disturb the existing shading. Where that's not possible, then there are other tools such as the Clone Stamp or the Patch Tool that allow you to copy gradations in shading from one area to another.

 

[jonnybloo]

Thank you again. Lots for me to go off there. I'm sure I will be back with more questions!

 

[jonnybloo]

Hi there again. I have spent the last few weeks messing with a light tent and some lego and trying to get the images right, i had my first attempts at the above too. I tried two ways, both are very rough attempts especially the second which was hand drawn using the trackpad on my laptop - painful!

1. I roughly sized the shirt using the techniques you described (though i now realise i didnt use the liquify tool). I need a lot more practice at this, in the end i found using Puppet Warp allowed me to fit the shirt to the contours, although it was painstaking and i think has distorted the shirt quite a bit. Im also not convinced it looks real enough, is there a way to simplify the shirt image almost make it look a bit more cartoony ?!

2. With this one, i added a new color layer and hand brushed the short blue. I like the flat colour and the fact it shows the original lighting gradients etc, it looks simpler and seems more in fit with the subject. However it needs a lot of tidying up (i left it rough around the edges and haven't finished the sleeves etc). I then found images for the badge, sponsor etc and magic wanded (!?) them, refined edge and pasted them onto the lego layer. Does that sound right ? Is there a better way ?

Anyway, here are the end results, not finished and not even remotely tidy!

Wondering if technique 1 s better but find a way to cartoonify the shirt a little ?

 

[agentmoeller]

I think number two looks much better. You can always use a selection tool to select the "shirt" area, which takes away a lot of the paintstaking hand-painting work.

 

[jonnybloo]

I think number two looks much better. You can always use a selection tool to select the "shirt" area, which takes away a lot of the paintstaking hand-painting work.

Thanks for the feedback

Yes that sounds obvious now and would be easier - steep learning curve at the moment for me this ha !

I just went on autopilot and started colouring in