Photoshop Elements 3 Solutions: The Art of Digital Photography- P7 pptx

I’ll demonstrate by selecting, ing, and pasting the Doggie Diner head from the image on the left in Figure 6.20 to theshot shown on the right.. With some images it’s just as effective to

in this chapter, but more difficult when you are pasting to an area of continuous tone,such as a sky.

I use one method with pretty good success I’ll demonstrate by selecting, ing, and pasting the Doggie Diner head from the image on the left in Figure 6.20 to theshot shown on the right

copy-Figure 6.20: The two components of my composite.

Figure 6.21 shows a close-up of what happens if I simply make a selection, copy

it, and paste it into the street shot

Figure 6.21: By using a simple copy and paste, I get the jagged edges shown here.

Now I’ll try something different:

click on the white background with a Tolerance of 15 pretty much does it,

Diner’s hat that were missed by the Magic Wand

shrink it by 2 pixels (Select
Modify
Contract) This tightens up my tion and reduces the chance that I’ll copy unwanted background areas.

Figure 6.22

Figure 6.22: The Feather Selection dialog box

slightly shrank my selection and feathered it, the edges of the Doggie Diner headnow blend more naturally into the new background

soft-edged brushes to make it perfect

Figure 6.23: Now the Doggie Diner head looks like it’s always been on top of Telegraph

Hill Even on closer examination (right), the deception is barely visible.

Cloning Elements from Multiple Images

Up to now, I’ve shown you mostly select, copy, and paste techniques to combine

images With some images it’s just as effective to use the Clone Stamp tool to create

photo-realistic composites For some people, “painting” images with this tool is more

intuitive and satisfying than pasting

Take the screen shot in Figure 6.24 The images were all taken with the samecamera, around the same time of day, against a similar background Using the Clone

Stamp tool to combine parts of these images is easy because I don’t need to be precise

It would be more difficult if the backgrounds were significantly different In that case,

selecting, copying, and pasting would be the way to go

Figure 6.24: Combining birds from similar shots is easy with the Clone Stamp tool.

This is what I did to come up with the composite:

cloned bird to go on its own layer, I created three new layers: Layer
New
Layer

options bar and placed my cursor over the bird Then I held the Alt/Option keyand clicked on the bird This defined my source point

palette I made sure I was working on one of the new layers Then I placed mycursor over the target image window, roughly in the area I wanted to add thenew bird I clicked, held, and painted After I was finished, I selected another

image, containing another bird, and repeated the process On the target image,

in the Layers palette, I made sure to select yet another new layer, thereby keeping each bird on its own layer

used the Eraser tool to define the edges of some of the birds I used a Transformcommand to slightly reduce the size of one of the birds (Image
Resize
Scale)

Transform) I could easily do all this because each bird was on its own layer

Figure 6.25 shows the final version

Figure 6.25: The resulting composite (left); the Layers palette (right) Note each cloned bird

is on its own layer.

Note: If you want to clone within the same image, it’s often useful to clone onto a

your source point by holding the Alt/Option key and clicking Then, in the Layers palette,select the new layer Now when you click and hold while painting the image window, thecloned part will appear on its own layer You can move it around separately, or remove itwithout damaging the original underlying image This also holds true with the Healing Brushtool Select “Use All Layers” from the Healing Brush tool’s option bar to “heal” onto a sepa-rate layer

Pre-visualizing a Scene

Photo-realistic composites are extremely important in the world of architecture

Architects can use a composite not only to show a client what a potential building or

remodel will look like, but also to help convince a design review board to approve a

project by showing the effect that it will have on a neighborhood

David Mlodzik is one of those rare architects who is not only versed in designbut is also computer-literate and adept with high-end digital imaging A significant part

to create several views of the hotel Then he turned to Photoshop Although he worked

in the full version of Photoshop, everything he did is possible using PhotoshopElements

Here are the steps he took to create an image of the hotel:

Figure 6.26: The site photograph (Photo by David Mlodzik)

ren-dering had a black background, which David removed by using the Magic

McDonald’s in the site photograph David created a copy of the backgroundlayer containing the site photo, and in that layer he erased the areas shown at

to select and delete

Figure 6.27: When it’s pasted in (left), the hotel sits in front David used various erasing techniques to make room for the hotel (right).

Figure 6.28: The final composite (left) David’s Layers palette (right).

Note:If you want to create a composite from several images and are willing to give up

Shooting Digital: Creating Realistic-Looking Composites

A while back I got a call from a company in Sweden that wanted a group shot of their board

of directors for an annual report The only problem was that one of the directors, futuristPaul Saffo, lived in California and wasn’t about to make the long trip just for a photo opportu-nity Would I shoot a picture of Saffo here, and they’d Photoshop him into the group later?

When you attempt to come up with a photo-realistic composite as I did for this one, there areseveral things to consider Ideally, all the images should be shot with the same kind of cam-era and lens and from the same perspective In my case, I had to rent the same kind of lensthey used in Sweden Unless you want to spend a lot of time trying to match the film grain

or the resolution of the digital file, use the same type of film, or if using a digital camera, usethe same resolution As you can see in the following picture, it worked out just fine And neither Saffo nor, for that matter, I, had to endure a long plane ride

Removing Wires

Exteriors and Interiors

If you are selling, renting, or swapping a ing, you’ll be amazed at all the things

build-Photoshop Elements can do to help bring out desirable features and diminish or remove detractive ones Even if you aren’t in the real estate business and just appreciate a good pic- ture, the techniques you learn in this chapter will be extremely useful.

Straightening a Slanted Looking Facade

Look at just about any real estate magazine or newspaper section and you’ll see photos

of buildings with sides that appear to converge rather than remain parallel This is an

effect called keystoning, and it occurs when the plane of the camera and the plane of

the building are not parallel to each other You already encountered a variation of thisphenomenon earlier in the book, in Chapter 5, when you saw a poster on a wall thatwas shot at an angle

You can avoid keystoning by positioning your camera so that it is level with theplane of the building However, this isn’t always possible, and Figure 7.1 illustrates mypoint I shot it with a Canon Digital Rebel aimed up from the sidewalk Notice howthe pillars appear to converge when in reality they are parallel In some photographskeystoning isn’t bothersome But in others it can be so extreme that disorients theviewer and leaves an impression that something is profoundly wrong with the building.Fortunately, it’s not hard to fix shots like this with Photoshop Elements and the

Figure 7.1: The pillars of this building appear to converge.

Here’s what I did to straighten the building:

Layer) I turned the visibility of my original background layer off so it wouldn’tconfuse me later when I applied the Perspective command (You can turn alayer’s visibility off by deselecting the eye icon in the leftmost side of the Layerspalette.) I created a copy for a couple of reasons: first, I wanted to keep myoriginal image intact, and second, Transform commands aren’t an option whenyou are working on a background layer

The grid makes it a lot easier to determine when the lines of the building arestraight Figure 7.2 shows the grid, which I customized (as described in the fol-lowing Note) Using the grid is an alternative to another method I described ear-lier in the book, when I used the Pencil tool to draw a 90-degree reference line

Figure 7.2: A grid provides a series of 90-degree lines, which I can use as reference points

when I try to straighten the building.

Note: To change the pattern and color of the grid, choose Edit
Preferences
Grid (in

color You can choose solid, dashed, or dotted lines You can also vary the spacing of themajor grid lines and the frequency of minor grid lines

kept the default Transform settings found in the options bar In the Transform

Transform commands from the Transform pop-up menu To display this menu

in Windows, click the right mouse button anywhere in the image window On aMac, hold down the Control key and click anywhere in the image window

were parallel

can alternatively press Enter/Return

To better illustrate how the Perspective command works, I’ll give you an ple of using it in the wrong way On the left in Figure 7.3, you can see what happenswhen I place the pointer on the bounding box handle in the upper right and click anddrag it inward On the right, you can see what happens when I change the perspective

exam-by dragging the opposite way

Figure 7.3: The image on the left shows what happens when I drag the bounding box inward The image on the right shows what happens when I drag the bounding box too far the other way Notice that I’ve expanded the image window, as signified by the gray Now the bounding boxes are visible.

Figure 7.4 shows the correct adjustment, as confirmed by the vertical grid lines

In the second and third attempt it was necessary for me to slightly expand my image

window I did this by placing my cursor over the lower-right corner of the image

win-dow and clicking and dragging to the right This made it possible to see the perspective

control bounding boxes even as I dragged them beyond the edges of my image

Figure 7.4: By aligning the sides of the pillars with the grid lines, I can see that this is about

right.

Transforming a Kitchen

When the real estate market is hot, Jeanne Zimmermann shoots hundreds of photos a

month with a digital camera She documents property from both an indoor perspective

and an outdoor one She shoots big buildings and small buildings, commercial and

res-idential As soon as she is finished shooting, the images are quickly downloaded into

her computer and prepared for newspaper ads, flyers, and the Web (Her website is

www.loftsunlimted.com.You’ll also find her work under the name Sally Rogers.)

Jeannie’s job is demanding because it requires attention to both quality and speed She

does her best to get the shot right in the first place, but that’s not always possible

con-sidering her schedule

Figure 7.5 shows a not-so-uncommon mistake: the picture wasn’t framed erly In the days before Photoshop Elements, Jeannie would have had to live with the

prop-mistake, reshoot, or decide that the kitchen wasn’t that important after all Nowadays

she just starts up her computer and gets to work

■ Figure 7.5: This kitchen looks like it was in an earthquake (Photo by Jeanne Zimmermann)

Note: Just about all real estate shots will benefit from the basic image-processing

sev-eral useful advanced digital photography techniques such as extending exposure latitude.Here is what Jeannie did to straighten the kitchen:

layer, and turned on the grid, just as I did in the preceding procedure

the main menu bar

with the vertical lines of her grid Rotating some images like this will rotateparts of the image off the edge of the canvas If this happens, you can enlargeyour canvas area (Image
Resize
Canvas Size) before applying theTransform command or, even easier, use Image
Resize
Reveal All after youapply the Transform command

You can alternatively press Enter/Return

creat-ed a skewcreat-ed image frame She uscreat-ed the Crop tool to crop the image, as shown

on the right in Figure 7.6

Figure 7.6: After using the Free Transform command, the kitchen appears mostly level

(left) Jeannie used the Crop tool (right) as a final step.

Note: Nowadays most real estate photographs end up shared on the Web In Chapter 10I’ll show you ways to optimize images destined for the web In Chapter 12 I’ll show you how toautomatically create a web photo gallery of images

Removing a Construction Sign

Jeannie does her best to shoot around clutter or objects that detract from the property

In the case of Figure 7.7, she couldn’t avoid the bright red construction sign in front,

which gave the false impression that the building was still under construction

Figure 7.7: The red construction sign is distracting (Photo by Jeanne Zimmermann)

Here is what she did to remove the sign:

and save the original layer for future reference

image 400 percent She positioned the red construction sign in the middle of herimage window (If an image is larger than the image window, you can move itaround by holding down the spacebar The cursor turns into a hand Then,when you click and drag, the image moves with your cursor.)

or “cloning” parts of the road and sidewalk by holding the Alt/Option keywhile clicking on them, and then painting the sampled areas over the cones(shown on the left in Figure 7.8) Then she sampled parts of the wall and thesidewalk and painted them over the sandwich sign, this time using a HardRound 5 pixels brush because the work in this area required her to be more pre-cise Next she turned to the sign itself, sampling and using parts of the windowand window frame to cover it At times, the clone didn’t look quite right

Jeannie selected a Soft Round 35 pixels brush and a Soft Round 9 pixels brushand cloned the intact tree trunk over what remained of the sign (shown on theright in Figure 7.8)

Figure 7.8: Jeannie started with the red cones, using the Clone Stamp tool to replace them with parts of the sidewalk and street (left) She then cloned the tree on the left side of the image over the area where the red sign used to be (right).

Zoom tool) and tightly cropped the image Using the Levels controls, she

adjust-ed the contrast of her image by choosing Enhance
Adjust Lighting
Levels

+U until she got what she wanted, as shown in Figure 7.9

Figure 7.9: The final image after cropping, applying Levels, and increasing saturation.

Note: The secret to using the Clone Stamp tool is not to get too caught up in the details

Zoom in to see what you are doing But then periodically zoom out to see how your worklooks in a normal view It’s also useful to turn away from the monitor from time to time Whenyou look back, you’ll have a different perspective The fact is, after spending so much time

most people probably won’t even notice

Smart-Blurring a Background

In the photo shown on the left in Figure 7.10, Jeannie wanted to highlight the

stair-case, not emphasize the view out the windows Shooting-wise, there wasn’t much

Jeannie could do except cover the windows completely At first, Jeannie tried selecting

the entire window area and applying a Gaussian blur (Filter
Blur
Gaussian Blur)

She got what you see on the right in Figure 7.10 The Gaussian blur blurred

every-thing, including the window frame She considered selecting each glass part of the

win-dow individually and applying the Gaussian blur, but that would have taken too much

time Instead she turned to the Smart Blur filter, which gave her a lot more control

over the blur, enabling her to blur the background and leave the window frame alone