Enlarging structures with photos

Holy cow! That looks great... where did the light switch go?

Very nicely done!  The match-up of the edges is flawless and you can't tell it's not one huge building.

Super work!

George

Unbelievable; fantastic job.

Bravo!

Holy trompe l'oeil batman!

Dave

Awesome.  I never would have guessed it could come out that seamless and realistic looking.  Don't think a Photoshop pro could make it that good.

And I too have the lightswitch question.

fabulous solution, john. and i can't tell the difference even when i blow up the photo. definitely a technique to keep in mind. and, yes, where is that light switch anyway? and what should i be looking at when you say you added a second photo on top with the windows and doors cut out. i'm confused by that reference. 

thanks. 

jerrman

Thanks everyone for the comments.  This turned out to fairly easy, and one of my few endeavors that came out better than expected.  The most time consuming part was moving the light switch.  Nothing magic there, just cut a new hole in the wall board, attach the junction box, and string the wires to it.

Jerrman. I should have been clearer in my post. The flat is made of two identical photos, one on top of the other. The lower layer is mounted on 3/16" gatorboard.  The upper layer is mounted on chipboard, but I cut out the window and door openings.  This gives a subtle 3D relief to the structure. 

You can probably tell that I used Photoshop to modify the side panel before going to a professional shop to have it printed.  I added more doors along the dock, I got rid of the fire alarms and fire escape, and I took out the sign and center two vertical sections.

Now that I know this works, I may try to make some background buildings the same way. The advantage of this in addition to its ease, is that your background buildings will have the same "feel" as your foreground ones.

Wow! Really nice work, John.  Love the original flat too.

nick

I love it!

Wow.  What a great idea.

Very impressive, John!

What amazes me the most, I think, is how you got the picture to the exact same size as the original building and no barrel effect (or whatever they call that edge rounding you sometimes get in photos?). Great idea! Amazing work!

Thanks for posting this!

Tom

I'm not so good with photography and only have a Fuji P&S (no DSLR) camera. No Photoshop either. Good to know how it was done. The shooting square part I am going to try and work on though, guess I will have to eventually get a tripod.

Thanks for explaining,

Tom 

Excellent idea this looks great.

Dang!  That looks really good.

Thanks for sharing.