The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers part 27 pot

You start by going to the Layers panel, clicking on the Background layer, then pressing-and-holding the Command PC: Ctrl key and clicking on Layer 1 to select them both you can see they’

Continued Continued

Step One:

Before we get into this, make sure you read the short intro up top here first, or you’re going to wonder what’s going on

in Step Two Okay, here’s a photo of a co-worker with his glasses on

Step Two:

I could see right away that we were going

to have a reflection in his glasses, so I told him after the shot not to move his head, but just to reach up and remove his

glass-es, and then we took another shot Now, with both images open, get the Move tool

(V), press-and-hold the Shift key, and

click-and-drag the “no glasses” shot on top of the “glasses” photo

Fixing Reflections

in Glasses

I get more requests for how to fix this problem than probably all the rest

combined The reason is it’s so darn hard to fix If you’re lucky, you get to spend

an hour or more desperately cloning In many cases, you’re just stuck with it

However, if you’re smart, you’ll invest an extra 30 seconds while shooting to take

one shot with the glasses off (or ideally, one “glasses off” shot for each new pose)

Do that, and Photoshop will make this fix absolutely simple If this sounds like

a pain, then you’ve never spent an hour desperately cloning away a reflection

Step Three:

Holding the Shift key will help get the

align ment of the two layers somewhat

close, but in this case, it’s still off by a bit

because the shot was hand-held Anyway,

for this to work, the two photos have to

be lined up with each other right on the

money, and in CS5, Photoshop will do it

for you You start by going to the Layers

panel, clicking on the Background layer,

then pressing-and-holding the Command

(PC: Ctrl) key and clicking on Layer 1 to

select them both (you can see they’re

both highlighted here) Then go under

the Edit menu and choose Auto-Align

Layers (if that function is grayed out,

it’s because you don’t have both layers

selected) When the dialog appears,

leave it set to Auto and just click OK

Step Four:

A little progress bar will appear telling

you that it’s aligning the selected layers

based on their content, and within a few

seconds the two layers will be precisely

lined up (as shown here Of course, it’s

hard for you to tell they’re precisely lined

up unless you’ve downloaded these two

photos and checked it yourself What?

You didn’t know you could download

these same photos and follow along?

That’s only because you skipped the

introduction at the front of the book)

Once your images are aligned, use the

Crop tool (C) to crop away any

transpar-ent areas Okay, now you’ll need to hide

the top layer by clicking on the little Eye

icon to the left of the layer, then click

once on the Background layer (as shown

here) Now you’re seeing the original

shot, with the reflection in the glasses

Step Five:

You’re going to need to select the inside

area of both lenses, and you can use

which ever selection tool you’re most

comfortable with (like the Magnetic

Lasso tool perhaps), but for a job like

this, I think the Pen tool is perfect If you

choose to go the Pen tool route, get the

Pen tool (P), then go up to the Options

Bar and click on the second icon from

the left (so it just draws a path) Then

click the Pen tool once on a lower part

of one of the glass lenses, move your

cur-sor over to the left, and click, hold, and

drag slightly to the left (as shown here)

This draws a slightly curved path between

the two points (the farther you drag after

clicking, the more the curve bends)

Step Six:

So basically, that’s how it works—you

move a little further along the lens, click,

hold, and drag Move again—click, hold,

and drag, and continue this as you’re

basically going to trace around the lens

with a path When you get back to the

point where you started, a little circle

appears in the bottom-right corner of

your Pen tool’s icon letting you know

you’ve come “full circle.” Click on that

point to close your path Now do the

same thing to the other lens Once

you’ve gotten paths drawn around

both lenses, press Command-Return

(PC: Ctrl-Enter) to turn your paths

into a selection (as shown here)

Remember, you don’t have to do this

using the Pen tool—use any selection

tool(s) you’re comfortable with

Continued

Step Seven:

After your selection is in place, make

the top layer visible again (seen here) by

clicking in the first column on the Layers

panel where the Eye icon used to be

Then, click on the top layer to select it

Step Eight:

To complete the effect, just click the

Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of

the Layers panel (as shown here) and

the eyes from the top layer replace the

eyes from the original glasses layer, and

your reflection problems are gone

After (the reflection is gone) Before (notice the reflection—most visible in the right eye)

Fixing Group Shots

the Easy Way

Group shots are always a challenge because, without a doubt, somebody in the group will be totally hammered (at least, that’s been the experience with my family

You know I’m kidding, right?) Okay, the real problem is that in group photos there’s always one or more people who blinked at just the wrong time, or forgot to smile,

or weren’t looking at the camera, etc Of course, you could just take their expression from another frame and combine it with this one, but that takes a lot of work

Well, at least it did before the Auto Blend feature This thing rocks!

Step One:

Here’s a photo of a cute family The

problem here is the dad isn’t looking

very happy and the baby has her

head turned

Step Two:

Of course, with group shots you take

as many shots as the group will endure,

and luckily in the very next frame there

was a great shot of the dad smiling,

and the baby looking at the camera,

but now the mom has her eyes closed

So, the idea is to take the dad and baby

from this shot, and combine them with

the previous photo, where the mom

has her eyes open

Step Three:

Start by dragging the two photos into

the same document: get the Move tool

(V), press-and-hold the Shift key, and

click-and-drag one photo over onto

the other (it will appear as its own layer

in the other document, as you can see

in the Layers panel shown here) Now,

you’ll need to convert the Background

layer into a regular layer, so go to the

Layers panel and double-click directly on

the Background layer This brings up the

New Layer dialog (shown here), which by

default renames your Background layer

as Layer 0 Just click OK and it’s now a

regular ol’ Photoshop layer

Step Four:

Usually, the photos line up pretty well

if the shots were taken on a tripod, but

if you handheld them, or your subjects

move a bit, you’ll want to select both

layers and choose Auto-Align Layers

from the Edit menu first to have

Photo-shop align the two layers for you In

this case, Auto-Align Layers seemed to

squash the top photo a little, so I pressed

Command-T (PC: Ctrl-T) to bring up

Free Transform and just dragged the

bottom-center point down to match

the bottom layer

Continued Continued

Step Five:

The next two steps couldn’t be easier:

First, in the Layers panel, hide Layer 0 from

view by clicking on the little Eye icon to

the left of the layer Then click on Layer 1

Now, get the Rectangular Marquee tool

(M) and draw a rectangular selection over

the parts of this layer that don’t look good

(in other words, you’re going to delete

ev-erything you don’t want to keep—so put

a selection around the mom on the right)

and hit the Delete (PC: Backspace) key

This leaves you with just the part of this

layer you want to keep Now, Deselect

by pressing Command-D (PC: Ctrl-D).

Step Six:

Hide that top layer from view, and

make Layer 0 visible again by clicking

once in the first column where the little

Eye icon used to be Click on Layer 0, then

do the same thing—erase what you don’t

want (in this case, you’re putting a

Rectan-g ular Marquee selection around the dad

and baby), then press the Delete (PC:

Back-space) key, so you have the image you see

here Now you can Deselect The key thing

to remember here is this: make sure these

two layers overlap, because Photoshop

needs some overlapping area to do its

blending (in other words, don’t erase so

much that there’s any gap between the

two layers—it’s got to overlap I’d shoot

for a 20% overlap if you can, although

I didn’t have that much here, because

the baby shifted position, moving her

head closer to the dad)

Step Seven:

Go to the Layers panel and make both

layers visible (as seen here) Now, you have

the right poses together, but you also have

a very harsh seam moving right through

the mom’s face and shirt It looks “pieced

together” big time Of course, you could

add layer masks and try blending the edges

yourself with the Brush tool, but that’s

what makes this technique so sweet: CS5

will do a brilliant job of all that for you—

in just seconds

Step Eight:

Here’s the last step: select both layers in

the Layers panel (click on one layer,

press-and-hold the Command [PC: Ctrl] key, then

click on the other layer to select it as well),

then once both layers are selected, go under

the Edit menu, choose Auto-Blend Layers,

and click OK in the resulting dialog That’s

it—in just seconds you have a perfectly

smooth, seamless blend of the two photos,

and Photoshop did all the hard work Now,

you can just grab the Crop tool (C) and

crop away any transparent areas left by the

alignment You can see the before/after

on the next page It does leave the layer

masks that Auto-Blend Layers creates in

place, just in case you want to tweak them,

but I haven’t come up with an instance

where I needed to yet Just choose Flatten

Image from the Layers panel’s flyout menu,

and you’re done

Continued

Before (the dad and baby on the left are in bad poses—

one has her head turned, one’s not smiling)

After (the first photo is seamlessly blended with the second photo, replacing the dad and baby on the left with their better poses from a different frame)