Adobe Photoshop CS6 Vanishing Point Filter

Hi everybody, Mike Brown back with you, welcome back to educator.com's Adobe Photoshop CS6 course.0000

In this lesson, I'm going to show you a couple of neat tricks under the Filter menu with the Vanishing Point filter--and if you know what vanishing point is, that has to do with perspective, and in this filter we can retouch an image in perspective, and there's a way to do three-dimensional compositing, and I'm going to show you how to do both of those in this lesson, so let's get started.0007

Here I have an image of a building shot heavy perspective with a wide angle lens, and what we're going to do just for this example, is take these two windows in the center of the building and clone them up to the top.0030

Zoom it up so you can see it...you can see that everything runs in perspective, so we could obviously cut them out in a normal fashion, I think we can actually do that, let's do it with the polygonal Lasso tool and see how well it works--just select, select, select...select...close it off...0044

Copy, paste, and move it up, but now you see that--let's do a little transformation, we'll rotate it...but you see that it's just, even when we move up there we could do distortion and stuff like that but it probably wouldn't match perfectly, there's an easier way.0070

What we're going to do is use the Vanishing Point filter, so let's take a look at our layers, we've got a duplicate layer already, we'll go to the Filter menu, right down below Liquify will paint to the Vanishing Point filter.0092

Here it is...I'd already created a plane but I'll start over.0107

This is the create plane tool, this is the edit plane--you can correct your mistakes, a Marquee selection tool, a Rubber Stamp, a paintbrush, transformations, color picker, Hand tool and the Zoom tool, so let's go ahead and zoom up, and we need to set a plane in perspective so that the filter knows what's up.0112

So we've got the create plane tool and we set down as you see the little target, the four corners of the plane and we set what's called a node, let's zoom it up so we can see our edges here, let's start right...here...inside this corner.0135

Actually, let me see...that window goes out a little bit so let's do it over here...right there.0153

And we'll come back and follow the line of bricks in perspective all the way over to here, that works pretty well, we'll set it right on that line.0164

Hand tool, come down and follow the--I didn't move it over far enough did I?0176

That's alright, I'll fix it as we go along--we're going to come back down to this spot, and then go over and go parallel, and right in that corner, that set our plane but the plane is a little bit off because we're coming out here, so what we need to do is edit that with the Edit tool.0183

We're going to click and drag that back over until we get to a spot there--now we've got the plane all set, all we have to do is take our Rubber Stamp tool, and we're going to stay inside the boundaries there and we're going to retouch the window.0207

So, we're on that line, we're in a couple, Option or Alt, and we're going to click right at the bottom corner of the window, and you can see the green target, the green says we're ready to go, and we're going to go right up...that would be...0229

Let's go right along that edge, probably right...there...let's see how that did.0249

No, we needed to go a little further out, so we're going to go ahead and set again--I started on the line, I needed to be a little out.0261

Option...click, there's my target, and I need to be just a little bit out, right there should do it, and I just start cloning...0268

And then you can see down at the bottom, look at the lower part of the window that I'm cloning from--you can actually see the green cross, it's showing me where I'm at so I can actually follow that edge pretty easily, and we just come back across and just go ahead and clone it in, it's pretty simple...0286

And there we go, let's get that edge nice and clean all the way up to the top, let's go right over and take that archway out of there...bring it back and fill it all in...there we go.0310

I made a mistake, so we're going to pick that back up...I went too far...OK, clean this...down on that, I think I got it all, there we go.0329

Zoom out, and you can see that in perfect perspective, these two windows now reside up on the top, we'll click OK, and there we have it--we'll zoom out, there's our layers, there was before, there was after, and you notice that in perfect perspective, we were able to clone from one spot to another using the Vanishing Point filter, so that's one thing you can do with the filter.0347

The other...and we have now retouched in perspective, so we can deal with that...why am I not layer rasterized?0377

Oh, I see what I did wrong, I needed a blank layer, sometimes I'm not on top of it, so we've dealt with retouching and perspective in the Vanishing Point filter, now I'm going to show you a little more complex idea that deals back with our seeing digitally and how you are creating composites from scratch.0394

So, I was on the road heading to San Jose to do some tutoring to PayPal and eBay, and I stopped at a little town called Soledad up in the San Joaquin Valley...just walking around the town, saw these nice little brick buildings and such, and I had seen this mural on the side of this brick building that I really liked and I already photographed that.0414

It was slightly in perspective--I have corrected this into a pure rectangle and copied it off the side of that building already, and then I walked around the block and down an alley and I saw this building and went "oh, this is absolutely perfect to demonstrate what you can do with the Vanishing Point filter".0438

We could replace the sky easily with some clouds, it's kind of an interesting composition but the building is kind of blasÈ.0457

I could also put something in on the top for the title, but we're going to take this mural, and put it on this building coming up the side and across the face of the building in 3D melded into all the corrugated metal.0467

Alright...first off, what you have to do...is you have to have a blank layer for this particular exercise, because I'm going to paste it in just like we retouched the image before and when you're done it comes out, it's done, it's set.0481

If I go ahead and paste that, this mural into this image, and I put it in place, once I come back out into Photoshop, it's done, it's fixed in the image, and you can well see that this is uniform in exposure and I'm going to need to play with two sides.0504

So I'm going to make a blank layer so that when we do this in the filter, the perspective corrected mural that's pasted onto the building will come back in this layer, and then we can manipulate it further.0522

OK, I'll show you how that works, so we got our blank layer and it's highlighted.0538

The other thing when you're pasting into the Vanishing Point filter, you must have the object that you're pasting already copied into the clipboard, you can't go into the filter then go out and copy and come back in, so the first thing we want to do, we've already got a selection around this, is Command on a Mac, Control on a PC, the letter C to copy...0542

Back to our image, now we've got the mural in the clipboard, let's go to the Vanishing Point filter...OK, there we are.0568

Now you remember all our tools, so the first thing we're going to do is create a plane on this side of the building, and we have the create plane tool, we're going to click up here...and then we're going to move to the back corner in perspective, come down probably to about here, and then over to the front of the building again, and there's our plane.0581

Now one thing I want to show you, if your plane is not correct--if it's not perspectival correct, when you're off a little bit it'll be red, if you're off a lot it will be yellow and it will tell you that you need to repair it until it gets to blue, and there we have an accurate perspective plane.0606

OK, we've got one of them, now we want to go and we want to click four corners of a perspective plane or object to create an editing plane--we want to tear off another plane, so we're going to take this node--we move right over to the node, click and drag and it pulls another plane technically 90 degrees from the first plane.0627

But again, we can correct that perspective by grabbing a node, this is very simple...aligning it with the front here, bringing it up so it's in perspective in this line, and there we go.0654

Now the only other trick that I need to tell you, is that when you paste, if you have a grid like this and I just go Command or Control+V, it will paste it into there and not wrap it, so we'll click outside, we have the entire framework, and now we go Command or Control+V, and it will paste in the mural.0667

Now, the mural's in, and it's too large so we're going to go to our Transform tool; Shift key, grab a corner, and make it plenty small, and drag it down, it's actually too small so Shift, make it a little bigger again, that looks...fairly close right there.0692

So now all we have to do is drag it down and watch what happens--once it hit the plane, there it is, notice?0717

It wraps around--this is amazing isn't it--wraps around the building--now it's a little bit off in size, but that's no problem.0724

We'll release it, we still have the transform, we're going to grab a corner and make it a little smaller, and then we're going to move it, and now it came in a little kind of off, so we're just going to physically fix it ourselves so it looks right...0733

That looks pretty good right there, and move it up to the corner, and position it where we want it in perspective, and there we've got it set, so now we're there we'll click OK.0754

Notice it came in in perspective as one piece on the new layer.0770

Now what I'm really doing here, is I'm wrapping it around the building, so the right side of our image is darker (the shadow side) and then we have the bright side so I need to split this into two pieces.0775

We're going to take the Pen tool, and go right down the edge of the building...let's move that point and make it right on the corner--there we go.0788

Right down to here...all the way over and around, and back...let's get our Pas panel, make a selection with zero pixel feather, so I want a perfect edge, and now I'm going to copy and I'm going to delete it from this layer, paste it and it will make a new layer, and now we have two layers.0799

OK, and I'm just going to take the Move tool and my arrow keys and re-align it...there we go.0827

Now it's back together but we have two layers, so we can take this side over here and darken it down a little bit, or actually it's about right, right now, and make sure that it works the same on the other side.0840

The only other thing is you notice we have a drainpipe, and I want that mural to go behind the drainpipe, so what we're going to do--once again with the Pen tool, is make sure we get this accurate...zoom it up so you can see what I'm doing here--that point's a little off...0853

Down to the bottom...right there...and over here...and back up to the top...0873

And this time I'll make the selection about a half a pixel, feather so we have a smooth edge, make selection, point 5 pixels, and we'll delete it, de-select--Command or Control+D, and there you have...0894

It's in perspective but we're not quite done yet, because it's there but it's real obvious it's a composite, but we're going to fix that, so the first thing we're going to do--now we're going to deal with blend modes, so that we can blend the mural into the corrugated metal--watch this.0912

Remember our contrast--these are darken, lighten, and contrast--let's try the overlay for starters which is the one that usually works and there it is, look at that, I mean look at that, that's amazing!0932

Let's go back to normal, down to overlay...let's try darken just for fun and see what happens.0946

Now that did not do the job at all, overlay is the right one and it's in but it's a little bit dark, but that's OK.0958

What we're going to do is leave that blend right there, Command or Control click, and we'll do a curves adjustment layer and just open that thing up a little bit...let's open up the shadows just a little bit--the real dark parts, there we go.0965

Looking pretty good, let's zoom it up and take a look.0987

There's our shadowing along the side of the building, and look at this, even the shadow of the drainpipe is there as well--look at that, perfectly three-dimensional on the side of the building, so let's fix the other one.0991

We're going to go ahead and try a blend mode here...let's go with soft light and see if that does, that did not work, I think overlay?1007

Overlay is not bad, but let's try the darken and see what that does, no, once again overlay is the right one--it's the contrast, the lighter than neutral gray and the darker, there we have it, but it's a little bit--we need a little bit of color and exposure change.1018

So once again Command or Control click the thumbnail and we'll do a curves adjustment again, and bring this down just a little darker, snap the contrast just a tiny bit...there we go.1035

And let's get rid of those, and zoom it up one time, and look at this--let's just go up close so you guys can see it, look at that.1053

It just fit right in three-dimensionally, we could actually open up those shadows a little bit, let's do that, there, see?1064

By opening up the shadows ever so slightly (the dark shadows) we see a little of detail picking up along the corrugated side of the building which gives a more realistic look to it, so we started from here...1076

And then we gradually added and adjusted with the Vanishing Point filter and a couple of other adjustments for curves and blend modes--notice we have overlay blend mode in both cases1097

We put an image three-dimensionally on the side of the building using the Vanishing Point filter in Photoshop CS6.1111