Cleaning Up<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Using photoshop my first task was to get ride of the bricks. The clone stamp tool did a great job of painting in the texture and removing what is clearly a wall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anytime I do lego photography there is a reflection which, as you can see, is on the Death Trooper’s head. If you look you’ll see a window and a cloudy day. My next task was to remove this, again with the clone stamp. However, once I’d done that I felt the helmet was a little too black and didn’t look quite right. I tried to put a gradient layer on to add some light reflection to the helmet. I made it 5% size and reduced the gradient to 50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Effects<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At this point it is time to start adding the effects. Firstly, I made the blaster using a new layer. Holding shift and brushing a white line from the blaster to just over the edge of the rock was all it took. I added some gaussian blur and a red glow round the outside. Then I placed some sparks around the turret to make it look a bit more star warsy. Finally, I used the colour dodge brush on the turret to bring out the colour and make it look like it was actually firing a beam. That, with the sparks made it look how I wanted it to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I continued by adding some sparks and dust to the overall image. It needed some atmosphere and to feel like a battle was raging. I also added some fog – all blended in screen mode – to really create the effect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For each layer I used the brush tool to clean the edges and remove unwanted dust, fog and sparks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was at this point that I extended the laser beam. It just wasn’t quite right so I extended it out of the frame. I also decided I didn’t like the gradient fill layer on his helmet. Instead I put a sparks image on it and made it small enough to appear to be a reflection. I brushed in some orange in screen blend mode at 40% opacity to give it a glow. I’m much happier with this effect than the gradient fill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Finishing Touches<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finally I added a gradient fill from black to transparent with an orange hue. I originally tried it with blue but I preferred the orange because it complemented the battle field effect I was going for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I hope you like the final image. I’d love to hear what you think and what you would have tried. Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n