Printing your own back scene from home

[TravisM]

I’m thinking of printing my own layout back scene from pictures I’ve taken and then attempt to stitch them together.  I was wondering if someone had done something similar and how were the final results?

 

I have a Canon printer which does a pretty good job but I assume that i would have to use photographic paper rather than normal A4?  Another thought I had was to bite the bullet, print of the out pictures I need on normal paper, tape them together with them slightly overlapping and number them on the back, then take the finished back scene to a local printers and get them to stitch it all together and print it out professionally.

 

Any useful tips would be most helpful.

[DGO]

The hardest part is getting the pictures to stitch together properly, The best way to do this is go out with a tripod and a fixed focal length lens with manual exposure, you need a good pit of overlap from one frame to the next and ideally in 35mm terms you would want to use a 50mm lens to get minimal lens distortion. You need to take the pictures in quick succession so that exposure doesn't alter too much between frames, then its fairly easy to stitch together in a photo editing package. Print wise you can get good results from modern inkjet plotters that will let you print long prints, the longest I managed some time ago was about 20 feet long and 3 feet high, but I was working for a company that sold the plotters so had the time and resources to play around, a lot of companies don't want to print extra long, look for someone who can do banner printing, consider slightly desaturating the image so that it fades into the background a little more.

 

David

[Campaman]

There used to be a program called posterizer or something like that, that could take your files and make them into a poster.

 

A google or bing search may find it.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Campaman

[Harlequin]

Lots of graphics programs have the ability to automatically stitch photos into panoramas - and some of them are very clever about dealing with exposure differences and lens distortion.

 

They also have lots of other tools that you can use to do things like removing unwanted satellite dishes, cars, pylons, etc. or placing new trees where you want them.

 

So you could create the entire composite image on your computer first and get it exactly how you want it. Maybe even print some or all of it out on A4 sheets just to test.

 

When you're happy export that as a PDF file and take that to a printer who can print it on a continuous roll, perfect for a backscene. Printing big PDF files as banners and posters is bread and butter stuff for printers.

 

[Kylestrome]

Printing such a large poster commercially is not cheap, so it is a good idea to get an A4 or A3 test print, of the finished panorama, before commiting to the final print. Then you can check how this works on your layout for colour balance, tonal rendering and sharpness and make any changes that might be necessary before it becomes expensive.

 

PS. While you might want support your local printer, you might find a better deal by using an online printer.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Kylestrome

[Ouroborus]

Ive just done this very thing.  I had a picture of an estuary printed onto foamboard.  £25.  Absolutely delighted with it.  Just choose your image carefully to ensure there is nothing in it that wrecks the concept of scale.

[TravisM]

On 14/12/2021 at 11:37, Harlequin said:

Lots of graphics programs have the ability to automatically stitch photos into panoramas - and some of them are very clever about dealing with exposure differences and lens distortion.

 

They also have lots of other tools that you can use to do things like removing unwanted satellite dishes, cars, pylons, etc. or placing new trees where you want them.

 

So you could create the entire composite image on your computer first and get it exactly how you want it. Maybe even print some or all of it out on A4 sheets just to test.

 

When you're happy export that as a PDF file and take that to a printer who can print it on a continuous roll, perfect for a backscene. Printing big PDF files as banners and posters is bread and butter stuff for printers.

 

Can you suggest a few graphics programs which are fairly self explanatory to use for a simpleton like me.  I did make a test picture, mainly to work out the scale of the fence and if the sky reached the top of the back boards.

 

Edited December 17, 2021 by jools1959
Spelling

[budgie9]

We did the same making our own background images from photos we took whilst back in the UK around the Warwickshire countryside. We used our own photos and used some from pictures on the internet. We use Linux computers but the software we use is available on Windows also.

Using programs like Gimp  So we could get real close in to the pictures to edit the detail and pin point the parts to link images. Then   LibreOffice is what we used for stitching  the pictures together  Printing them using a Canon  printer, In our case it is a Laser printer but an Ink jet one can get just a good images. Stick then to foam board as others have suggested is all we have done, works well.

[DCB]

You have to be very careful with using modern images of the countryside for mid 20th century layouts.

It's trees. Millions of the things. Especially along railway lines. Great big trees where formerly there were little ones or none at all.  Guzzling happily on the CO2 rich atmosphere we now enjoy.   Its very difficult to get suitable photos of the countryside as it was in the 40s 50s and 60s as the colour photos of the period are generally fairly rare compared to black and white, and the colour of the few available photos is demonstrably awful.  

[Chris M]

Its the best way to do a backscene IMHO.

I took photos then lassoed the land wanted and dropped it onto a blank sky. That way any differences in exposure don't really show up. I used free apps GIMP and paint.net to edit the photos. Getting the scale right is the key thing. Its worth doing some home printing to check out the scale. I did home print my first photo backscene but I found the colours went off a bit over a year or so. From then on I have used Solopress to print 60" by 40" posters of my backscenes. This has worked fine for me. Current price for am uncoated bond 60 by 40 poster delivered is £17.48. I remove any items like modern cars or phone masts from the photo using cloning .

 

One of a number of start photos

 

 

The sky background

 

The photos significantly resized down, lassoed to get land only and then stitched together on top of the sky. As this was going on the wall I decided to add a totem.

 

I needed to reprint an earlier piece of backscene as I had mucked it up so I added this to the 60 by 40 area I was going to have printed. I also had space for another smaller totem. I work in N scale which of course affects the size of the backscene.

 

 

This all worked out fine

[Chris M]

A few more photos showing my backscenes

 

I've cloned a bit of water to the right side of this one to hide the baseboard edge.

[Harlequin]

14 hours ago, jools1959 said:

Can you suggest a few graphics programs which are fairly self explanatory to use for a simpleton like me.  I did make a test picture, mainly to work out the scale of the fence and if the sky reached the top of the back boards.

 

 

I could suggest loads but can't vouch for how easy they each are to use. That's something only you can decide.

 

I will say though that I find the open source programs, such as some of the ones mentioned above, tend to be more difficult to use than the commercial offerings. I think that's because they don't have the pressure of market forces driving them to improve the UI in the same way.

 

I have a feeling you might be a Mac user. (Am I remembering that right?)

 

On that basis I will suggest just one package: Affinity Photo It has everything you could possibly need including a panorama tool, it runs on Mac and Windows, it's really highly rated (award winning), it's made in England and doesn't cost a fortune. They have provided free major upgrades ever since I bought my copy and I assume they will continue to do so.

 

(No, I don't work for them! I work for the competition but for what you want Affinity Photo is the better product.)