Hi. I am considering using a photo backdrop for my ho layout and I am looking for advise on where to start. Should i consider the MRR speciality places or just have it printed locally? I am interested in rugged mountains and i am considering cutting out the mountains and putting on a blue painted drywall. Does that make sense. also when you did your backdrop where did you get the photo? How did you make it wide enough to cover the whole layout? Thank you.
I took some great pictures of the mountains around Las Vegas from the top story of the parking garage at New York, New York. I didn’t intend on using the mountains for the backdrop but thought the sky might be helpful because it was so beautifully blue and cloudless. Of course, as nice as it is I’ve only used it once for a small diarama I built. I printed it at OfficeMax. It wasn’t expensive and the quality was very impressive. If I did it again, I’d decrease the blue hues. It was a little too blue.
Well, basically, you’ve covered all the angles.
You can buy stock ones from various manufacturers. These are pricey, but good quality. The scenery choices are somewhat limited, and may not match exactly what you want to do.
Alternatively, you can take your own photographs (or find ones on the internet, provided they are not copyrighted). This is cheaper, especially if you have the means to print your own, but correcting the photos to get a quality backdrop is tricky, and may require special software. You can join photos together either by “stitching” them with software or carefully sizing the images and splicing the printouts together.A local printer is cheaper, but they may not understand exactly what you need. Some of the folks who sell pre-printed backdrops will also convert your photos into one, but it ain’t cheap.
The short answer is that either approach makes sense, to use your phrase. It’s really a question of what you are prepared to spend and how much of your own effort you are willing to expend.
Use my thread named, “New Backdrop”. Use the community search and it will come up. It explains everything for taking your own photo’s and building a backdrop and having it printed on Scrim and mounting it. Doug