Miniature photography tutorial (sort of)

Taking inspiration from a request for a collaborative post for FTW Bloggers Group I decided to tackle the subject of miniature photography once more. Since there are already many good tutorials around I decided to write an article showcasing two of my favourite tutorials. I chose these tutorials because they are easy to follow even for people with limited knowledge of digital photography and furthermore they need no specialist equipment. They have enabled me to take decent pics with minimum fuss so I highly recommend them for beginners or people who just can’t be bothered spending hours to get a decent shot of their minis. The first tutorial focuses on photographing minis while the second focuses on photoshopping pics of minis.

Tutorial focused on photographing minis

Tutorial focused on photoshoping minis

And a few tips concerning Photoshop and image size…

1) "Auto Levels" in Photoshop does a pretty decent job if you can’t be bothered to adjust Levels manually.  You can try both methods and compare the end results. Usually when I have to edit lots of pics I just use "Auto Levels".

2) Reduce the image size. The standard in CMON and most forums is 600 pixels width.

3) In Photoshop there’s the “Save for Web" option which allows for a decent image quality combined with a small file size. When you choose this option select "High" as the quality setting and you’d have the best balance between image size and picture quality. Anything better than "High" will only increase the file size without any significant improvement in image quality.

And lastly some of the most useful Photoshop shortcuts (very useful when you have to edit 30+ pics):

Auto Levels = Shift+Ctrl+L
Image Size (adjust) = Alt+Ctrl+I
Save for Web = Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S