Awseome mini \\ Crappy photo

[J2FcM]

I guess this is half request, half wondering.

Something I saw a while ago, thats caught my interest again because I\'m painting again.

There is a mini here which is ranked in the mid 9\'s, yet I have seen an alternative photo of the same mini from a golden demon website. It seemed the GD pic showed a lot of imperfections when compared to the CMON photo. I could see areas of transition, the perfect blends were gone, and there were areas that had that slight chalky effect (from using white).

Now, this is by no means an accusation to photo editing, or anything like that... but I\'m wondering what a really highly rated (8\'s+) would look like if taken in less than ideal conditions.
In addition to that, WHAT IS, too much photo editing? I try strictly to take a photo that accuratly represents my mini, nothing more or less. Sometimes if I keep things just SLIGHTLY out of focus it blends all my highlights nicely, or maybe I bump all the colors up, but I never actually do.
Ya know if I saw some GD winners in person this would answer my question, but the mos tI\'ve ever seen is GW store painted minis.
so whats the deal though, can a photo Make or Break a highly rated mini?

 

[GreenOne]

You judge by what you see, there is no way around that. Even if trying to focus real hard on the painting, you\'ll be influenced by the pics.
And when making their pics, the painter will always try to make it look as good as possible, this is in no way cheating.
The only true mini is the one you see IRL.
The VERY hight rated picture on CMON usually have very good photo, and maybe a bit of photoshoping, just enough to let you guess, but still IRL they would probably make you go WOW!
There is a lot of 9+ minis where friends comment say \"much better irl.\", that must be something to see.

 

[lono]

I\'ve seen a lot of Golden Demon entries up as close as you can get without getting mini in your eye, and it\'s true that photos don\'t do the work of the very best painters justice. They can\'t convey things like richness of colour and tone, and particularly metallics as easily in a photo, no matter how good it is. On the other hand some minis are really helped by photography. A lot of NMM tends to look better in photo form because it fixes it and the light source. There are also a fair few tricks in Photoshop you can do to improve smoothness and things like that if you aren\'t such a good painter.

Ultimately if you do modify your minis greatly through Photoshop skills you are just kidding yourself, and are going to miss out on ways to improve through feedback.

 

[Hinton]

As GO said, we can only judge by what we see. Many times there will be photos posted of what looks like a pretty good mini, but it\'s out of focus, too dark, too bright, what-have-you. When it comes to judging a mini online, the photo can make a great-looking mini seem really bad.

For some of us, the online community is the only contact we have with other mini painters, so photos are the only way to share our work. I\'m still working on getting good photos of my stuff so that it doesn\'t look so bad, even though I could probably make them look a lot better using a program. However, other than cropping, resizing and some slight brightness/darkness adjusting, I don\'t do anything to \"fix\" my minis in Gimp.

 

[Legacy Account]

If two photos of the same mini look drastically different, chances are foul play is involved. Don\'t believe all the lights, camera and background excuses.

I\'ve seen pics of the same mini that bear no relation to each other. Photoshop\'s blur tool and the smudge tool seem to be the cheaters\' weapons of choice.

In short, too much editing is anything done to improve/mask the paintjob. Exposure and colour correction fine. Whacking a gradient background in, no probs.

Digital blending, blurring and airbrushing should be a capital offence!

String them up by the goolies!!

Edit: There\'s also an arguement for people posting larger pics. Small pics are a total waste of time for actually assessing the quality of a paintjob and the arguement that they are \'lifesize\' is a bunch of bull as well, because I can hold the thing closer to my eyes IRL, increasing magnification and picking out very fine detail (or mistakes).

 

[GreenOne]

Spacemunkie is right as usual.
Pics size is also a BIG point, you just can\'t see the transistion cause the editor resize at the closest pixel, kind of blending anything small.
I am often a victim of that, in the sense that I can be impressed by a very good presentation, and vote hight without being able to judge the technical imperfection. Then again, you judge by what you see.
On the other hand, I appreciate a photo that\'s very up close and personnal, and won\'t vote it down because I can actually pick up a transition or two.


As for photoshop, it\'s a wonderful tool, you can create absolutely false things in photoshop, and get them to look confusingly realistic, imagine what it can do with a mini, one could photo a primed mini, and make all the work on photoshop, and get a 9+ mini, maybe it did happen, who know. I don\'t see that as really WRONG, photoshoping is a skill afterall, but it surely belong on worth1000 instead of CMON.

Guess it would be less catchy to call the site, cool picture of a mini or not, CPoaMoN, but let\'s face it, that\'s what it is.

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by J2FcM
...so whats the deal though, can a photo Make or Break a highly rated mini?

Yep.

Originally posted by J2FcM
...but I\'m wondering what a really highly rated (8\'s+) would look like if taken in less than ideal conditions.

Lots worse.

If you take a photo of a painted model with raking light (coming from the side) and particularly if the light is not diffused, even a great paintjob can end up looking pretty bad. Light the same figure with soft diffusers, from above, and it\'ll look a million bucks.

In the historical-figure area there have been a couple of notorious high-profile figures that looked great in photos but are downright crappy in the flesh (not badly painted but with problems of colour) so it\'s possible to actually get something to look better than reality, although it\'s not easy.

Einion

 

[J2FcM]

I think good photos usually make the mini look better, in that, if you\'re looking at mini\'s from arms length, or on a gaming table... I think a mini in the 7\'s or a mini in the 9\'s COULD look the same (unless freehand is involved)l

 

[Avelorn]

@Spacemunkie: You are wrong. And I agree with Einion. Why do I know that? Because I collect miniatures which I have photographs from different places on (My own, the painters and the GD coverage for example). Minis will look drastically different under different lighting conditions, different cameras etc. Part of that is that much of what we do is based on optical illusions. A seemingly perfect blended surface will under stronger lighting often show transitions.

If it was the US GD they have some of the sharpest images around and often uses lighting that is very revealing.. meaning not many shadows.

 

[rosac]

hehe, it took me a while to make a background for my mini, then everyone here that saw it hated it. Note to self find out how to make gradient backgrounds in photo studio 2000

 

[Legacy Account]

@Sven: Funny, but I\'ve seen images that have blended out highly visible brush marks and plugged patchy highlights! I\'m buggered if lighting will do that.

You\'ll get variations in hue, contrast and sharpness that will, as you say, drastically alter the look of the mini. Blending out visible brush marks (on flat surfaces) totally? I think not.

You can usually tell when something has been fiddled.

 

[Avelorn]

@Scott: Well sure, it depends how drastic the changes are...

But I also remember I unpacked one of my bought miniatures in my room with ambient daylightlighting and I was amazed because the blends looked perfect. But under my lamp they didn\'t. Same will of course apply for pictures depending how the miniatures are lit. Soft, harsh, from above etc. Not really rocket science.

 

[J2FcM]

I think Avelorn and Spacemunkie are both correct.

Avelorn, when you say the GD photo lighting is harsh and finds the mini\'s weak points, I totally agree. In the GD photo of the above mentioned \"9 rated\" mini, I could see all the little transitions.
Then on a nice CMON background with moire subtle lighting, the mini transforms into a painting.

Spacemunkie is also correct, but since this is CMON, we should give our artists the benefit of the doubt! Surely they only take advantage of lighting... never blurring and smudging!!! alas, its not always so.

But, I truly think clever lighting can amp some mini\'s much higher than I would have normally rated them, even though no CHEATING per say happened.
Then again, I would argue that the only way to truly TRULY rate a mini is the GD way with that lighting that just knocks off all those helpful shadows and hunts down your every painting mistake.




ahem... time to stop using my harsh lighting :twisted: