Image Retouching

All backings need a certain amount of photographic retouching to bring them to fruition. Below are overviews of aspects we give attention to and use for the final image.

Panoramic Blending

Backing images are usually a hybrid of a few panoramas, especially when multiple camera angles are needed to be used for large sweeping views. This is especially the case when multiple directions of view need to be taken into account, requiring the need to maintain two, or more, horizontal perspectives. For example, the backdrop of New York City (see below) is a blend of five different panoramas created from two camera angles. The Cape Cod backdrop is a blend of seven panoramas from three camera angles. Here retouching is used to ensure a continuous and smooth transition throughout the image without any evidence of digital seams.

Day & Night Alignments

In order for a backing to work properly on set, there needs to be a perfect pixel for pixel registration between the day and night image. Although much of this battle happens on location while photographing the scene, it would be impossible to ensure all leaves or branches in the two images would align. Not to mention skies and shadows would change throughout the day and some objects, like cars, could be in one but not the other. To solve this, we often will need to blend cut outs from the day version to edit and blend into the night version to ensure perfect registration. For an in depth explanation on one such backing, click here to read on the backing we produced for Survival of the Thickest.

Night from Day Conversions

Although it is preferable to have a matching night photograph for any Day|Night backing, issues with weather, schedules or location logistics does not always make this feasible. In other cases having the night image does not provide any real benefit either due to registration concerns, such as with plant life, or the production is seeking a different vision then what the actual night view provides. Regardless of the reason, we can create a night image from the day image for use in either our Day|Night or Midnight backings.

To read more and see examples of our night from conversions, please click here, Night From Day.

“Photoshopping,” Sky Replacements & The Weather

As nice as it would be to be able to control the weather and all other aspects of site preparation, often we need to settle on correcting this in post. The most common task performed in post are sky replacements. This not only ensure matching day and night skies, but can go a long way to making a dreary day look more vivid. To this effect, we have a library of skies we have captured over the years to drop in when need be. Likewise, “Photoshopping” out cars, electrical wires, trademarks, political posters, and even trees are often part of post processing.

De-Winterizing

Technically a type of weather post processing, de-winterizing is a specialty all its own and can encompass a variety actions. These could be snow and ice removal, asphalt and pavement replacements, shortening of building shadows, and/or adding leaves to trees and shrubs. Although a more intensive retouching effort, we have refined our de-winterization over the past year with new software packages allowing for a much more efficient operation. With that said, plan on adding an additional week to production for de-winterization.