Photo enlarging question.

[Rt5403]

So I've done a chambers kit and repaired a few other rifles. I'm thinking of diving in to a blank build and have a rifle I would like to copy the profile from. Does anyone know the easiest way to blow up a picture from the Internet to full scale so I can take a tracing of the profile?

[Bill Raby]

Find a teenager.

[Rt5403]

Find a teenager.

I have 2 of my own. They don't seem to have time or patience to mess with their old dad 😆.

[Hank01]

Microsoft Windows used to come with a photo editor as part of the software package. XP was the latest version i used. It's pretty simple to use but quality of the enlargement depends entirely upon the quality of the original. If the original is crappy then the enlargement will be even worse. Having switched to Linux several years ago i'm not sure if the photo editor is still part of Microsoft software package. Try searching the net for photo editors. There's some pretty good free ones out there.

Hank

[Jim Kibler]

Be very careful of distortion from the photo.  Use just the buttstock to enlarge and then it can still be problematic.  I've recently been doing some work where I photo a rifle and then superimpose it on an actual 3d model and it's pretty amazing the amount of distortion.  I was using an Iphone.  Perhaps a more proper digital camera wouldn't be as bad.

[Rt5403]

Be very careful of distortion from the photo.  Use just the buttstock to enlarge and then it can still be problematic.  I've recently been doing some work where I photo a rifle and then superimpose it on an actual 3d model and it's pretty amazing the amount of distortion.  I was using an Iphone.  Perhaps a more proper digital camera wouldn't be as bad.

I was thinking of using a projector.

[Dennis Glazener]

I will be 80 first part of June and I use Gimp which is free for downloading. It does about anything you could ask it to do except perk our coffee. Just learn one thing at a time as you need to do different things. I use a known or desired dimension to resize a photo and still retain the ration of the original photo. One draw backmis CV that you must have a printer that will print the enlarged photo.

Dennis

[Bill Raby]

   I know how to do it in Photoshop, but it is too complicated to explain. Jim is right. Distortion is a big deal and it is going to depend on the angle of the camera when the photo was taken. It is important to get as many measurements of the original as possible. But most likely the best you are going to get is the barrel length. Resize the picture to where the barrel length matches the original. The rest of it is going to be close but will likely involve a bit of guesswork. Good chance that you will have to make some adjustments to length of pull and length of the butt plate. There will be distortion. Don't matter what camera you use. It all depends on how the photo was taken. Best to take photo looking straight at it and as far away as possible. With a photo taken close up the lock might be only half the distance from the lens as the muzzle and butt plate. You will get a lot of distortion. That is minimized by a photo taken from a long distance with a telephoto lens. You will always have to do some of it by hand.

[Daryl]

With a digital camera I took a picture of the gauges needed for a nitrogen tank to air rifle transfer.
To post it on the air gun forum, I had to reduce the 2 meg picture to 30%. I saved that one to my desktop.
I just enlarged it with the stock windows "edit" program, 200%, then another 150%. The picture is not as good as the original, but it's still pretty darn good.
I think it does this in the "paint" program.

[Kansas Volunteer]

There is a mathematical way to calculate reduction or enlargement, but I can't remember it. I have however used a proportion wheel to scale thousands of photographs. It's very old school, but isn't frustrating. I've seen the wheels listed on ebay. Perhaps Amazon has them.

[Rt5403]

   I know how to do it in Photoshop, but it is too complicated to explain. Jim is right. Distortion is a big deal and it is going to depend on the angle of the camera when the photo was taken. It is important to get as many measurements of the original as possible. But most likely the best you are going to get is the barrel length. Resize the picture to where the barrel length matches the original. The rest of it is going to be close but will likely involve a bit of guesswork. Good chance that you will have to make some adjustments to length of pull and length of the butt plate. There will be distortion. Don't matter what camera you use. It all depends on how the photo was taken. Best to take photo looking straight at it and as far away as possible. With a photo taken close up the lock might be only half the distance from the lens as the muzzle and butt plate. You will get a lot of distortion. That is minimized by a photo taken from a long distance with a telephoto lens. You will always have to do some of it by hand.

Wish I could take my own photos and measurements but don't have access to the rifle. Going off pictures from the metropolitan museum of art website. Not looking to make a carbon copy but just like the profile of the wrist and drop of the butt and how slender it is. Going to take a lot of "artistic" license with the details.

[Bsharp]

You will need some sort of scale beside the stock to measure as you print sections of the rifle.

Why not just trace the stock. They must have an edge tracer of some sort.

[silky]

Here's my simpleton approach...

1. Print the photo/scan you're working off
2. Measure a "known" on that printout, such as the LOP, buttplate height, barrel length, etc., as precisely as possible (I use calipers). For this example I'll say I measure the barrel length of that printout to be 10"
3. Take the actual measurement I just made and compare it to the stated length of the actual barrel, let's say 40"
4. 40/10 = 4, so I need to enlarge the printout by 400%.  Pretty much any print screen will give you the enlargement/scale option
5. Print multiple sections of the image at the scale calculated then piece them together
6. Make adjustments as required

Smarter guys than me have commented on stuff like distortion and whatnot, but this 84% solution has worked for me.

Hope this helps!

- Tom

[longcruise]

If you have a full length picture you can load into a publishing program that will print a banner.  If  you know the length of pull you can fiddle with the photo size of the photo to match the length of pull in the banner photo.  Print the banner and you're set.

[Hatchet-Jack]

I did basically Silky's process to print out this Albrecht from an image on a KRF disc. There was enough measurements to give me a point of reference for blowing it up to "near" actual size.

[parve]

What I did for my first rifle was take a picture with my camera of the wrist / buttstock profile from a book, get that photo on my computer, and then open it in Microsoft Word. I then set the paper size to tabloid (11x17) and orientation to landscape, and toggled on the rulers to be visible. I then drew a line at the length of my desired LOP using the ruler in Word, then scaled the photo of the buttstock for that line to reach from the buttplate to trigger. I can't print 11x17 paper on my home printer, so I had to splice together the two sheets of 8.5x11 paper that were printed. I'm sure this method will work with most any of the photo editor software available.

Like others have said it's difficult to translate a 3d object to a 2d photo and retain perfect proportions, so I used the pattern I printed more as a guide to trace onto my stock than as a hard and fast pattern. I glued it to some posterboard so it would be a little more rigid for tracing, and had to utilize it a few times during my build to re-establish lines after drilling the ramrod hole and installing the buttplate. A more proficient builder would probably be able to start with one plan drawing and keep it throughout the entirety of the build, but I'm far from proficient and probably a little lucky that I was able to end up with something that resembles a rifle while chasing a moving target.

I'm doing the same initial photo enlargement for my second rifle to once again get me started in the right direction for a Lancaster profile, as well as helping to determine the size of the patchbox and engraving in relation to the stock. This time though I'm going to take a lot more time establishing the lines for the barrel channel, web, and ramrod hole on my plan drawing.

[bptactical]

This is one thing I discovered with the Robideaux Hawken plans- there is a scaling error if you try to pull measurement from the drawing.
If you go off of the measurements on the drawing you are fine.
I had a printing shop correct it (wasn’t cheap).
They told me that it most likely was the result of repeated copying using different machines over the years, each one threw it off a hair.

[Rich]

The easiest way is to identify a couple of known measurements on the photo, such as the length of pull and height of butt plate. Go to a good copy shop and have them make a full scale photocopy to the known dimensions. They have copiers that make large copies and should know how to do it. In my opinion, there is no need to do the forestock. You have to be careful that the photo you have was taken straight on and not with the gun tipped in any direction. That's why having more than one known measurement helps check that.

[axelp]

1. measure something in the picture. (X) (example side plate = .125"
2. You know that the actual measure of the side plate is 4.375" (Y)...
2. Y divided by X is the percentage of enlargement or reduction you need.  (example 4.375" divided by .125" = 350% )

Then take the photo to a local copy center like Kinko's or whomever and enlarge the parts of the photo you need by that percentage.

Note: it is important that the original photo was taken as close to straight on from the subject as possible to reduce the distortion due to forshortening and perspective etc.(most likely not the case in an old photo from a book) If you have no control over the photo, you will have to make educated adjustments to the final drawing to compensate for the photo. For example, If you can determine by looking at the photo that the barrel was canted toward the camera, then you can figure that the areas farthest from the camera-- the butt stock etc. will be foreshortened and you will need to adjust that a little bit. Its definitely not a perfect way to do an exact tracing.The more you enlarge the pic, the greater the distortion might become. A suggestion is to take several measurements of different pieces of the gun and get separate percentages to get a better result, rather than just using a single measure of say, the side plate and blow it all up the same.

By using a projector, you have the same challenges because the distortion is in the actual photograph. But if your projection is not 90 degrees from the wall, you get further distortions you have to compensate for,

Good luck.

[Daniel Coats]

What you're trying to do won't work. Imagine standing on the 50 yard line of a football field taking a photograph directly across the field. Now scale the photograph and measure the closest yard line on either side and it will be pretty accurate but the farther away you go downfield distortion becomes more of a factor.

Make a drawing using the actual parts for your build and how they need to fit together.

[RAT]

I do it pretty much the same as Brushyspoons. It's not a set of blueprints... so you still have to make corrections on the actual rifle... which you'd have to do with any set of plans... but it works. I verify my scale from the lock plate length compared to the reproduction lock I'll be using, the desired length of pull, and the buttplate height, etc. I fudge corrections as needed. I have a step-by-step handout in MS Word I can send you if you PM me with your email.

[Top Jaw]

Depending what you want to make, there are several rifle prints available showing full scale views for many different styles.  It’s a good starting point to use or to modify something from. 

[Ed Wenger]

A totally different approach would be to use an opaque projector.  If you have a known distance, this works very well.  Project the image from the photo onto a large piece of paper taped to a wall. Enlarge the photo to the know distance (e.g. LOP), then simply trace the profile.  I usually try to include the lock / side plate panels.  Of course, you’d need an opaque projector, so there’s that, but if you have one, or can get your hands on one, it’s worth a try.  Best,

          Ed

[David Rase]

A totally different approach would be to use an opaque projector.  If you have a known distance, this works very well.  Project the image from the photo onto a large piece of paper taped to a wall. Enlarge the photo to the know distance (e.g. LOP), then simply trace the profile.  I usually try to include the lock / side plate panels.  Of course, you’d need an opaque projector, so there’s that, but if you have one, or can get your hands on one, it’s worth a try.  Best,

          Ed

You are dating yourself Ed.  The opaque projector works well.  You can probably obtain one for a song.  Ebay has a bunch of them, fairly reasonable. 
David

[Ed Wenger]

A totally different approach would be to use an opaque projector.  If you have a known distance, this works very well.  Project the image from the photo onto a large piece of paper taped to a wall. Enlarge the photo to the know distance (e.g. LOP), then simply trace the profile.  I usually try to include the lock / side plate panels.  Of course, you’d need an opaque projector, so there’s that, but if you have one, or can get your hands on one, it’s worth a try.  Best,

          Ed

You are dating yourself Ed.  The opaque projector works well.  You can probably obtain one for a song, if you can find one. 
David

Hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right, David! 🤣.    Amazon!    Best,

       Ed