Teach me about changing perspectives in photoshop

May 16, 2019 12:17 PM

I have pictures I'm compositing together and also sometimes compositing backgrounds (e.g. a hardwood floor, a wall a window). Sometimes the perspective is a little off. I'm looking for simple explanations of how to fix this -- i.e. not just "use the perspective tool" but "if it looks like the font is too low, make pull the bottom handles apart/together/left right or pull the middle bottom handle up/down etc. etc."

The two common situations are a) Making the floor perpendicular to the wall/window. The wall being directly in front. or B) Laying objects on surfaces (table/chairs etc.).

Most of the perspective tutorials online are more about how to know how big to make something/vanishing points etc. etc. I'm not really understanding how to apply these to my problem.

I have access to Lynda.com courses, in addition to the usual internet resources. I watched a Lynda.com course on compositing in perspective, but it was all about vanishing points and how big to make things.

Also, the pictures are more or less in the right perspective and in many cases they are pictures I've taken myself and can retake. I'm not trying ot take a picture of something taken from directly above and making it a 45degree angle or whatever, it's just that getting the exact right angle is super hard, so I have pictures that are more less right but still look a little off.

posted by If only I had a penguin... to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: It sounds like you need to use the skew tool. Each corner and midpoint of the object's bounding box will become moveable. If the object is not already a separate layer - like a photo of a wall and a floor and you want to make the area where they meet a different angle - you can duplicate the layer, apply a mask to the part you want to change, then apply the mask to the layer (so the rest is gone, layer needs to be rasterized first) and then use the skew tool on that later.

If you want to memail me something specific I can weigh in directly. I do lots and lots of comping professionally.
posted by ohsnapdragon at 1:56 PM on May 16, 2019

One thing I do a lot is to use the free transform tool, and use the distort feature in it and drag handles as I see fit. I will sometimes have to finish that off with the warp feature in free transform, since there’s often lens distortion involved with photos. You may need to draw guides (if it’s straight horizontal or vertical you can just drag guides from the rulers, but if it’s not you’ll need to create your own, using a layer you can switch on and off when needed and using rectangular shapes rotated to fit the planes you need.) I get a lot of photos from clients that were taken with smartphones, so I deal with this a fair bit.
posted by azpenguin at 9:00 AM on May 17, 2019

Response by poster: Ok, I hadn't tried skew before, but he other tools I've used. The issue mostly isn't knowing what tool to use, but knowing how to use it. I don't have a good sense of "If it looks like the it's tilted forward, you need to do X" or "If you need to tilt it to the right, you need to do Y" etc.

I will memail ohsnapdragon and mattdidthat directly since they offered, but below for the curious or those with any additional insight (bonus points if you can tell me how to make those duckprints or the floor around them look a little wet) is the most recent image I've tried, which is not too bad because now I have skew which is the perfect thing.

But I added skew to my repertoire and it actually helped a lot. Here's an image with just about every perspective problem imaginable: The vanishing point thing (window bars), the problem of laying things on a surface (ducks and cookies floating in tea, duck footprints on hardwood), tilting things the right way (cookie on saucer, getting the angle of the wall right), etc. , Getting the background skyline to look right in the window.

I traced the window bars from the original image. Did a lot of the other things with skew, which is my new favourite thing. The floor was actually looking ok (again, cheated by tracing real hardwood floor underneath) but adding the duckprints makes it look a little wrong. I'm not sure how to skew or manipulate the duck prints to make them sit right so the floor looks right.

The full photoshop file is here.

Yes, the photoshop file still needs lots of detail work, cleaning up image masks, adding some shadows in room corners...something entirely different with the hands, I know...something different where window bar and wall meet, something to make the wall look less fake (maybe the shadows will help). Lots of stuff, but the main elements are there.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:12 PM on May 17, 2019

Response by poster: I don't have Illustrator, only Photoshop and Indesign. But it sounds like what you're saying is essentially put the footprints on the floor before distorting the floor and then distort them together. The floor, now that I recall was a somewhat complicated distortion. The lines are actually straight horizontal lines, the main thing I did was stretch parts of the image so the boards closer to the viewer are wider than the ones farther away. Not sure how well that will work on the footprints, but I guess it's worth a shot.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 5:01 PM on May 17, 2019

Best answer: Googlers and other future readers, I have another answer. It is the photoshop "vanishing point" filter, found under filters, not under transform. I found it via this Lynda.com course " Creating a Living Room Composite in Photoshop" Watch the segments "creating a vanishing point" and "placing flooring."
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:32 PM on May 21, 2019

Response by poster: Oh, and for anyone not familiar with Lynda.com, they are in theory paid, but both my public library and my employer pay for access for all patrons/employees, and I think you also get them free if you have a linkedin account, so you can probably get them free if you look around for different access methods.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 1:33 PM on May 21, 2019