War Cruiser Affinity Photo and Luminar Neo Composite Photo Process

Equipment Used:  Affinity Photo 2, Luminar NEO, SketchWow, Befunky.com, and remove.bg.  Pictures were taken with a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. 

This blog will focus on the process and digital programs I used to digitize the war rig and place it in some composite photos.  If you want to know how I built it, see this post:  How I Built the War Rig

PICTURES: I used a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra camera in photo mode.  I draped a green screen cloth over a kitchen chair with good overhead lighting.  The green screen cloth didn't work very well.  It left a green hue on shiny/reflective areas.  When I do it again, I will try a white sheet.  Setting it on a chair helped me get good angles straight on and slightly below.

See the green hue of the green screen.  I should have used a white sheet. But setting it on a chair allowed me to get great low angles. 

I held the rig with my hand to snag a jumping perspective.

Once the pictures were taken, I used the Samsung standard picture editing software to remove the backgrounds. Using the stylus made it quick and easy. I saved each edit as a copy. The background removal did an okay job, but I had to do a lot of fine-detail finishing in Affinity Photo. Next time, I will just remove the backgrounds in Affinity Photo.  

AFFINITY PHOTO:  

I'm not a professional graphic designer.  I know just enough to give myself a big headache.  When I'm stuck, I find Youtube instructional videos.  AF was primarily used for fine-detail background removal around the perimeter of the war rig.  Using the selection brush tool only worked well some of the time. I ended up spending too much time switching between adding or removing my selection.   For the best and usually quickest results, I spent most of my time using the erase brush tool.  This is a long and tedious task.  

I also used AF to create two gaslands gang identifiers.  Here is the first one I call "The Trumpinator":

Here is what I started with:

REMOVE.BG

For small picture files my go-to for background removal is the free website remove.bg.  I have added it to my web browser tool bar at the top for quick access.  It's so good and for small/low res pictures it's the way to go.  You can pay per pic or a monthly for high resolution but I save high resolution for Affinity Photo.  So I used remove.bg to remove the Trumpinator original file and turn it into a .png file.  

BEFUNKY.COM

Then I dropped it in Befunky.com to turn it into a drawing.  Befunky.com has a minimal free offering but I use it a lot and pay about $15 a month for it.  There is a way to get good-quality pictures from it for free, and I did for a number of months, but I used it enough to earn my $$$.  If you want to know about my free workaround, ask me in the comments.  Befunky.com has an "Artsy" section in the photo editor.  I used the Sketcher GFX to turn it into a drawing.

I opened the Sketcher version in AF and using the flood selection tool, removed all the white space. I wanted the picture to be transparent except for the black lines.  This was another time-intensive endeavor.  But as they say, the devil is in the details.  I wonder if DaVinci ever got tired of painting the details in the Mona Lisa. I bet he did.  That's when you stop and take a break.  There were about 4 times I thought I was done and saved it as a png to only see I had missed a little white space here, another there.  The white space stuck out like a sore thumb, so there was no ignoring it. 

Next, I selected the hair and changed it to yellow. Then I found a metal-textured picture I liked and used remove.bg to remove the background and turn it into a .png.  That's the hair from my picture above.  When I added it to my war rig pictures I kept it transparent so it takes on the look of whatever it's placed on.  

The next thing I did was find a blood-red painted circle, bullet holes, and a blood drop and run .png that is flowing from the ear with a bullet hole next to it.  Again, I used remove.bg to quickly complete those tasks.  By now you should have a good idea why it's called the "Trumpinator". It's September 2024 and elections are in November.  Last month Trump narrowly avoided a bullet through the brain and it nicked his ear.  

But when I was finished with the Trumpinator I felt it was too detailed so I made my own gaslands gang identifier:

SKETCHWOW
To create this I used the program SketchWow that I bought a couple years ago for $50. Now if I were an AF power user I wouldn't have to use SketchWow, but I'm not. I use SketchWow at my day job to create PowerPoint graphics for presentations--that's what it does.  I love SketchWow and this was my first time using it for my gaslands hobby. Now it looks pretty basic, and it is, and I may fine-tune it in the future, but see how it looks in this picture:

LUMINAR NEO

To get it to look like it belongs I had to use Luminar NEO.  NEO is where the majic happens.  NEO is the icing.  AF is the workhorse. NEO is much more user-friendly than AF.  NEO has a lot of editing tools but its Presets are gold.  So I'll edit a picture in AF and go to NEO to add a Preset to pull it all together.  In other words, I edited the war rig in AF, found a scenario picture on Google, and used NEO to add them and make it look like the war rig belonged (not an easy task).   

In NEO I added three layers: the scenario picture, the war rig, and then the skull.  Selecting the skull layer in the Layer Properties I selected the Overlay property.  That gave it the look that it looked like it was put on the corragated metal.  Then under the Develop options I tweaked the colors and lighting. 

In the above picture I added smoke from the mufflers and sand/dust.  Again, I found the files on Google and used remove.bg to remove the background and turn them into .png files.  For the sand/dust clouds I used AF color tools to match it to the sand.  

In the above composite, I added the moon under the "Sky" option in NEO edits and used the preset Vintage Mood at 45%.  

Here's my next composite:

For this I used AF to create the shadow. I created a duplicate of the war rig and turned it black.  Then I used the smudge tool to draw the shadow.  When I added it to NEO adjusted the opacity to fit.   Then I selected the war rig layer in NEO and adjusted the lighting and colors to match the background. Next I used the Sky edit to add a sky with some character.  I saved the picture and then added the save to NEO and used the preset film vintage.  

Here is the original background picture:

I've saved the best for last:

 I used the same procedures as the previous composites.  

Final Thoughts:

I want to take some pictures to use as my own backgrounds.  

I need to take pictures of my other gaslands mods to add to these pictures.

As much time and enjoyment this hobby has given me, I need to watch some AF instructional videos to improve my skills and reduce my effort/time using it.  

If you've read this far, thank you!  Please leave a comment so we can connect.