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Difficult Panoramas Part 2

Lesson 9 from: Adobe Photoshop for Photographers: Beyond the Basics

Ben Willmore

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Lesson Info

9. Difficult Panoramas Part 2

Next Lesson: Time Lapse Effect

Lesson Info

Difficult Panoramas Part 2

Sometimes you'll find when you stitcher panorama you here's just a two image panorama you come over here tools photoshopped photo merge and you might start off with the auto setting up here you click okay in the end result isn't our always as you desire let's take a look at what this one happens to do hopefully it'll do the same thing it did previously when I've stitched it just a moment to finish but when I'm done with stitching this particular panorama one side feels a lot bigger than the other uh in I don't know I might be able to crop it and get it to look okay but I want to see a photo shop can help me with something because if you look at like this area over here this ledge it looks a lot smaller than this ledge over here and I'm gonna see if there's anything I could do to try teo compensate for that so first what I'm gonna do is merge these layers together we don't need him a separate layers so I can either go to the layer menu in choose merge layers or the keyboard shortcut for...

that is command e control e and windows now if you look at my layers panel it's one layer then the next thing I can do is go to the filter menu and there's a choice called adaptive wide angle and it could be useful after stitching a panorama for those who want to get into the details, you can apply this to what's known as a smart object and if you're used to using them that's great turn into a smart object first I'm just not bringing it up so I don't put in too much detail, but I know somebody out there will ask the question, what did you do that look at what it already did to my picture? All I did was open this filter I haven't touched anything haven't changed a single setting and notice that now that ledge in the left side that used to look a lot bigger than the right side now looks about the same as the right side doesn't and I don't even do anything in here if I type command zero, that means zoom out so I can see the whole thing here's what it looks like if you want to see before and after I'll turn off the preview checkbox this was before which I didn't really like this is after which to me looks like a more balanced and result. Now you're not gonna fund that with every image that it magically seems to correct for things. But if you do find that when you stick your panorama, it just looks really lopsided it's completely what you wouldn't like it's like you're thinking about going and re stitching it where in the dialogue box that comes up when you stitch a panorama you used auto and you might decide to force it into one of the other settings just to see if you can do better. Well, merge your layers together, go to the filter menu and choose adaptive wide angle in see if it will give you a better looking and result it doesn't always, but sometimes it can then I'll zoom up on this image you will find sometimes with your panorama is that there's some distortion in it? Where lines that should be nice and straight or not if that's the case and in this image is not overly pronounced, but we'll see if I can affect it let's say that this line here down at the bottom is something that I remember in the scene it's something that should be straight I'm going to see if this constraint it out a little bit and help what I'm going to do is move my mouse to where that line ends and on the right side of my screen you're going to see a preview that zoomed up preview I can tell exactly where my mouse's and I'm going to get right on the tip of where the end of that linus you see where I am on the right side of my screen? Ah click the mouse button and keep it held down and now drag the other end of that straight eat area and I'll make sure I'm lining with it just like I was on the other side, but like that in that I'm gonna let go and what you'll find is this line I haven't let go yet. By the way, this line will often appear to be curved because it will know what kind of distortion your lens uh caused and it knows what settings it used when it's stitched this panorama on to know how that was affected and when I let go it's going to try to straighten that fine and I could do the same thing going the other direction I could line up on the edge of this close enough come over here on the edge again let go and it will cause that to be a perfectly straight line. You could also do the same thing with other lines, but sometimes you want to make them perfectly vertical or perfectly horizontal. So we show how that's done. If I look at this actual area, zoom up. I know that this vertical line right here in real life is nice and vertical it's not a nod angle. If I click on the base of that line, I'm looking at the zoomed up part of the right side and then I dragged up like this go up to about here looks like it's still line up with things and I hold this shift key when I hold the shift key, the line will change to a different color, and when I let go, it will adjust the image to make that area perfectly vertical. So this was architecture and it's a bunch of buildings, and I need to get those areas to be nice and vertical, so it doesn't look distorted. I go to each one of these spots, whichever ones happen to look like they're not perfectly vertical, hold the shift key before I let go, and it'll adjust the image trying to fix it. Now, some areas aren't supposed to be perfectly vertical, but let's, see, I'm going to see if I can find an image that would be more dramatic, and this so click okay here, and I'll go to bridge and see if I can find in another here's the end result of ah, panorama, I need to re stitch it because I don't have the original uh, that was unstitched, and you'll see what I'm done, how some of these areas will look blatantly curved, and how this tool will be able to figure out what that curvature is him straighten it, which you need to do before you go into it, is merciful layers together, so you don't have individual layers, you have it all, this one and if you want to be able to go in and make changes later, like you might decide, after you make a print, oh, I missed a part, and I need this part to be vertical. You might want to convert that layer into a smart object. First, you can convert it into a smart object by going to the filter menu and there's, a choice called convert for smart filters. If you choose that, then the adaptive wide angle that we apply to the image will be something that's not permanent, and you can easily go back in again in change, where the lines are. You've applied and it's nice, so if you need to make further changes later, uh, it hasn't been permanently applied, and so we'll do that on this particular one, and it'll just take a moment for this to finish. But while we're waiting, I know that if you happen to purchase this course, any image that I actually use on screen, where we make an adjustment to it, you will get us part of the course. So if you want to be able to practice on any of the images that I'm using here, if you purchase the course, you get the images along with it, but know that if it's an image that I only showed you visually on screen and we actually never opened it and photo shop to make a change, then you don't get those. Those would be ones like in a slide show of images I took in a particular location, but if we actually worked on like this one, you'd get it. So here it's done stitching it. I'm going to type command e to merge those layers into one. Then I'll go to the filter menu and say, convert for smart filters so that when I make this next change, it won't be permanent. It will be something I can easily change later, I'll go back to the filter menu and she's adaptive wide angle. And now if you look at the building, the left side, can you tell that this edge is curved? Casey can't let me zoom up on it that to me, doesn't look straight. Does that make sense to you? Yes, comptel, it doesn't quite look straight. We'll zoom out just so you know, when you first get in here on occasion, you'll find that it looks like it cropped into your image. Where if I move this down, do you see that I could see the full left side of that building all the way out to here, but when I get in here that parts cut off sometimes that happens when it first starts distorting things and trying to correct for the distortion if that happens and it cuts often area really needed there's a scale setting here you could bring down and that will make it to the images and so cropped it won't be on every image that that happens just on occasion right now I'm gonna move my mouse over here I'm going to get it to line up with the edge of that um what we call it rough ej I'm looking at the preview in the the large preview on the right side of my screen do you see where my cross areas I'm clicking and then I dragged to the other side and I can see that blue line is actually curving along with this and I'm going to get that tow line oppa's well and it just let go and now do you see it just straightened it and uh there's before theirs after straightening and so any time I see any kind of that distortion I'm going to come in click drag to the opposite side and it's sometimes a little difficult to get it to perfectly line up because we're not zoomed in on the picture so if you find it difficult to line up like I'm having difficulty right now just move left and right not just up and down move both there and it seems teo become a little bit easier and so you can do this as many edges you want wherever you find the distortion to be problematic in your image so here I'll try to get to the edge there and I'll go to the same edge way over here there you see how straightens it so with architecture you might have to do this in a few places to make it really look acceptable then remember if there's any verticals or horizontal ls that need to be perfectly vertical or perfectly horizontal when you're dragging across them like that hold the shifty and the shift key means snap it to vertical or horizontal if you forgot to do so you can press the right mouse button on top of one of your lines and then force it to horizontal or vertical arbitrary means just straight not necessarily vertical or horizontal mean un curved so I find adaptive wide angle be convenient uh in on occasion though if it's a horizon line that screwed up I'll find that I can't make it all the way across the horizon line what'll happen is the um what's the word the line that it ends up putting in will end up starting deviate from the curvature of the image let me see if that happens in this particular case this was stitched from a a panorama made out of fish I shots so it's very distorted but let me see if I click on the edge of this horizon line I start to drag and you see the curvature that line lines up with horizon if I keep going though let's see if it starts deviate from it if I go away over here wow it's still lining up most of the time when I do that, it would only make it about halfway across the picture before the curved line that is showing no longer really lines up with horizon and so I would have to just do it in two pieces I would go this far for one and then I would just make it second line to make it the rest of the direction. But this looks like a darn near matches across the whole thing. It's pretty close to straighten that out. I can go right up this cross if I want that to be perfectly vertical hold shift and then here let's. See if this can make it all the way across the cross see, it lines up it lines up and then by the time I get over here do you see how that curvature does not match the curvature of the cross? So I go for a cz long as it will match, maybe I could make it halfway. Ah, hold shift safe and get that perfectly straight it's kind of ridiculous bill, find this as this was literally shot with a fish islands where things are overly distorted to begin with so it's not quite even on each side there are other things we could do to even it out but it's amazing that I can get it to be anywhere near straight because a fish eye lens makes things completely curved on the edges all right so that's adaptive wide angle I use it all the time whenever I end up uh stitching panorama as are their general questions about using that or any of the other panorama techniques we talked about we're actually in good shape up here people are loving that tool on dh that's pretty new correct that must be a c c thing uh it's been in there for a short time there's a small chance it cs sixes either cs six or c c but it's not the newest version to see see see see they keep coming up with small updates its been in there a while it's hard for me to remember exactly when a lot of things have been added in this particular session let's talk about a weird kind of panorama that sometimes you need something to spice up the look of ah of an image here is where you could make it look like it's a panorama that's just a stack of images that makes up your image either one like this just for the shadows or one like this where it literally looks like some prince uh with that, all I'm doing is I'm shooting with a bunch of different angles here I'm in the galapagos islands and I'm shooting this iguana and I'm shooting and all sorts of different angles, just making sure that each shot overlaps the previous one by at least about half in this case, because of the extreme angles that I'm shooting at if I simply grab all of those and tell it to merge, it is a panorama. There are two changes that I would want to make. The first is at the bottom, I don't want it to blend the images together I wanted to keep them is distinctly separate images where I can see the edges of the photos, so I just turn off the check box that's, usually on its gold blend images together. The second thing is on the left side instead of using the choice called otto, I don't want to distort those images. I want them to stay as rectangular of photographs, so I'm going to come in here and choose the choice called collage, which can, on ly scale and rotate it cannot bend the photos all, then click okay and it's going to stack those images together and try to line them up by only scaling and rotating them can you see what the end result is? So it looks like a continuous picture there we wanted to look like these air separate prints, so with the top layer active, I'll simply go to the bottom of my layers panel that's where I find the letters f x and there's a choice within there that is called stroke stroke means draw a line around the edge, so I'm going to the letters f x at the bottom of my layers panel and I'm choosing stroke when I choose stroke and asked for a color there's a rectangle that's a sample if I click on it, I can choose any color I want I usually choose something just the slightest bit darker than white. The reason why use darker than white is when I print this the area out here beyond the photo's who's usually going to be the white sheet of paper and I want you to see a distinct difference between what's going to be considered the edge of these photos in the empty part of the document there is a size setting here right now it's set only three pixels I'm going to bring it up much higher than that and then I need to set the position because when it's set to the default which is outside, what happens is the corners on your image will be rounded like this if I change it from outside inside, you won't get rounded corners the other thing I'll do is on the list of the left side of effects also add a drop shadow so I choose drop shadow, and while that's open, I can click of my image and move my drop shadow, and we have size, which controls how soft the edges in opacity, which controls have darkness. Now all we need to do is somehow get that effect on all the other layers. There's a couple different ways of doing that one is to go to the layer menu, where I'm going to find a choice code layer style that's, another place where I could have added the stroke in the drop shadow. But in there I have a few extra options, one of which is copy layer style. So if this particular layer that's active has any those applied, remember their settings, then I can select the rest of the layers, the top most layers already selected all hold shift and click on the bottom one. Then if I go back to the layers panel, choose layer style, I can choose paste, layer style and it's going to put him on all the layers that are currently selected. So do I have it where it looks like a stack of prince that makes this up, and so sometimes you just need something to look different? You have either a boring subject matter, and it doesn't look good with a single shot and you spice it up or do you just want something that looks different than everything else you've seen? And so this I have dubbed the panel lage that's, a combination of the word panorama in collage, uh, and that's, how you end up creating the main thing is when you're stitching the panorama, you turn off the check box that is called blend images together, and you force it to use a setting called collage, which can on ly scale and rotate the pictures. And then we just need to do something to make them visually separate. So I added, he stroke on the edge in a drop shadow. If I didn't do that, it would have looked like this. You can also do it without the stroke. I will get rid of the stroke from the top most layer, and then I'll copy and paste that will see the difference copy later, style left all the layers, pace, player style and that's just drop shots. It's your choice.

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The best investment I've made to improve my PS skills. Mr. Willmore is a skillful lecturer. English is my second language and I appreciate the clarity of his voice and the fact that he repeats several times what he's doing or what he did. It is great for note taking as well as for practicing. Just an Excellent workshop! Thanks Mr. Willmore!

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