I've been laid-off for awhile and since I enjoy fooling around with computers as well as trains, I thought I'd try my hand at creating backdrop material for my layout. I did some Google Image searches for "old factory buildings", "1950's store fronts", etc., and saved some images that were taken pretty much straight-on to the wall. Sizes of at least 400 x 400 work the best - details are not good on the smaller size images.
With microsoft Paint which is pretty much on every computer, it's not hard to master copy/paste techniques to move or add doors, windows, remove utility wires and poles, etc. For this to work well, you need to be sure that the walls are straight, both vertically and horizonally. I found a program called "Gimp 2" which you can download for free. It allows you to straighten those walls quite nicely and has a very nice airbrush feature that allows you to weather your building, show wear on signs that you've pasted to the wall, and many other features. As with anything, you need to work with your software and images until you get the hang of it.
You may do it differently but for my final step, I usually input my separate images into an MS Word page where I can turn on the ruler at the top and sides of the screen, and add any additional signage, and size the completed wall for my layout. I picked some height demensions from the Walthers catalog for similar buildings. Depending on the need for perspective, you'll want to adjust size as needed. Final print on cardstock which can be pasted directly on your blue background or applied to foam core first for more depth.
The attached pictures will illustrate what you can do to create a nice backdrop.
Hardware store for backdrop.
Original picture.
Factory wall for backdrop.
Actual door used for backdrop image.
Original wall used for backdrop image.
Chuck
Grand River & Monongah Railroad and subsidiary Monongah Railway
I look for high resolution images on line, copy & paste to MS Publisher, Resize for my scale (HO). Here are a few to share.
I am primarily interested in factory and store front background images to supplement the three-dimensional buildings in the city and industrial areas. Note how simple photos of brick wall sections can easily be edited and combined with other photos to provide unique looking background buildings. So far I have been able to create twenty background buildings with these methods, all of them totally different.
Patterson Hockey Pucks and Lucky's Bar both utilize the brick wall panel below.
The grocery store is combined with this wall section to make a typical "old neighborhood" store from most any town in America.
You can speed up things by using the Advanced Search settings to control the size of images (e.g, very large is 2000x1000 pixels or so) and type of image.
Co-owner of the proposed CT River Valley RR (HO scale) http://home.comcast.net/~docinct/CTRiverValleyRR/
Thanks for the pointer, Doc.
Thanks for the pics! Here's another site for some good building and back ground photos.http://www.cgtextures.com/
loathar Thanks for the pics! Here's another site for some good building and back ground photos.http://www.cgtextures.com/
Thanks, Loathar. That is a great site - you might notice from my photos that a lot of my "raw materials" came from that site. Combined with photos of store fronts, signs, etc., the resulting images are only limited by your imagination and skills learned using the software. It's a great way to spend a rainy day.