Well, between the sunshine and the rain, I tried to snap some shots of some spruce foliage. It was difficult at first, but once I got the hang of it, with my white background tri-fold cardboard, the images were nice and clear and fit on the board perfectly.
But, after I started trying to chop the texture out, I ran into one issue with spruce: The bark color is so close to gray scale that I can't separate the shadow on the white board at the same time I separate the branch. Bla. I ran probably 50 different filter combinations to try and streamline the process but it wont budge. If I use those images it will require a bit of by-hand cutting or segregation.
So, I went back to the store and picked up hot pink and neon green poster paper to make "pages" for my tri-fold. I figure if I am taking pictures of something with dark bark, I can easily get away with just the white background. But for anything with a drab midtone branch, I NEED more actual green-screen techniques. For those things that are too bright green, I can use the hot pink. They didn't have bright blue, otherwise I would have just done that, which would be good for everything but the blue spruces and cedars.
This is actually getting more fun, the more things I try and learn. In the end, I think the textures I pump out for foliage are going to be on the quality of 2048 size (after cleanup from 2300). That will maximize my camera's power on the one axis, unless I switch modes to 3200. Either way, that only gives me the binary 2048 as the nearest value without purposely forcing loss. These should be very very very nice foliage!
