What You’ll Learn in This Hour:
<objective>Transformations
</objective> <objective>How to skew and distort pictures
</objective> <objective>Ways to fix perspective
</objective> <objective>How to transform part of a picture without affecting the rest
</objective> <objective>How to combine the Liquify filter with a transformation for a fun effect
</objective> </feature>In the last hour, you learned how to rotate images so that they’re level and straight. While using these techniques on your own pictures, have you run into some that just can’t be completely straight? Like a photo with a building in the background? In that type of photo, you get the left side of the building to be perfectly vertical, but then the right side is tilted. This happens because of your perspective when you took the picture; you were closer to the bottom of the building than you were to the top, so the bottom appears wider. This sort of problem occurs all the time, even with smaller objects. To fix it, you need to learn how to transform your images.
Whenever you move part of a picture, you’re transforming it. The same is true when you resize images or their components. When you transform an image, you retain the picture’s content while changing its size, shape, or position. Transformations include moving, resizing, rotating, and flipping—all of which you learned how to do in previous hours. The transformations we look at in this hour reshape a picture or part of a picture. In Photoshop Elements, you’ll find these in the Image, Transform submenu: Skew, Distort, and Perspective.
The Transform commands operate on selections or layers, not the entire image. If a selection is active, whether it includes all of the image or just part of it, that area is transformed; if not, everything on the current layer or layers is transformed. When you choose one of the Transform commands, the selection or layer contents are surrounded by a marquee that looks just like the cropping marquee. It has handles at each corner and in the middle of each side; the handles you move and how far you move them determine the new shape of your selection (see Figure 12.1).
By the Way
Transforming shape layers works the same way as transforming selections or regular layers, except that all the Transform commands are in a Transform Shape submenu if you’re working on a shape layer.
When we talk about a skewed perspective, we’re talking about something that tilts to one side. That’s exactly what skewing an image does: tilts it to the left or right while keeping the top and bottom level. Whether you know it or not, you’ve probably already seen skewed text. When you use an italic style with a font that doesn’t have true italic letterforms built in, the program you’re using usually just skews the type to the right (see Figure 12.2).
You can apply this transformation to an entire layer or to a selected area on a layer. To begin, select the layer or area that you want to skew and then choose Image, Transform, Skew. Drag any of the transform marquee’s handles to skew the image. You can skew in both directions in the same transformation; just drag a side handle and then the top or bottom handle. When you’re satisfied with the results, click the Commit check mark or press Enter.
Create Text and Its Shadow
One way you can use skewing is to show which direction light is coming from in an illustration by creating shadows. Let’s give this technique a try with your name.
Start a new document; Default Photoshop Elements Size is fine.
Choose the Horizontal Type tool. Click anywhere on the canvas and type your name in your choice of font, size, and color.
In the Layers palette, drag the type layer onto the New Layer button to create a copy of it.
Making sure that only the new layer is active, choose Image, Rotate, Flip Layer Vertical to flip the new layer so that the type is upside down and backward—that is, so it looks like a reflection.
Using the Move tool, move the type on the new layer below the original type. This shadow will be cast by a light source behind and to the left of the original type.
Select the shadow type with any Type tool and click the color swatch on the Options bar to choose a slightly darker color for it.
Did you Know?
The easiest way to choose a darker version of the same color is to click the upper B radio button in the color picker, the one that stands for Brightness. Now drag the color bar’s slider down until the new color is dark enough. Because you didn’t change the hue (H) or saturation (S) settings, the color is exactly the same as the original except for its reduced brightness.
Switch back to the Move tool and choose Image, Transform, Skew. Drag the shadow type’s bottom handle to the right, and click the Commit check mark when you’re done (see Figure 12.3). You might have to slide the shadow back to the left a bit so that the bases of its letters are aligned with the original type base again.
This technique produces a sharp-edged shadow. If you want to make it more realistic, choose Filter, Blur, Gaussian Blur. Photoshop Elements tells you that it needs to simplify the type layer before proceeding. Click OK and then drag the Radius slider in the Gaussian Blur dialog until you’re happy with the softness of the shadow; then click OK again. At this point, you’ll notice that the shadow is sticking up over the base of the original type’s letters. Drag the shadow layer down under the original layer in the Layers palette to fix this minor problem (see Figure 12.4).
If you thought skewing was fun, you’ll love distorting. With this transformation, you drag the corners of a selection in any direction to produce a funhouse-mirror image (see Figure 12.5). When you drag each corner of the transform marquee, the others stay put, unlike what happens when you use Skew.
The Distort filters, found in the Distort submenu of the Filter menu, produce a wide range of effects that are related to the Distort transformation. So if you find you like the results you get when you apply a Distort transformation, you’ll want to try out the Distort filters as well.
The term perspective refers to the effect on an image from the onlooker’s point of view. It’s like skew, but toward and away from you instead of left and right. Because of the perspective effect, objects farther away from you appear smaller than those close to you because they take up a smaller amount of your total field of vision at that distance.
When you see the effects of perspective in an image, you feel that you know where you are with respect to the objects portrayed in the picture. Artists use this phenomenon to fool the eye. Forced perspective is an optical illusion used in visual media to make it appear that an object is closer or farther from the viewer than it actually is. You accomplish this by purposely providing an incorrect frame of reference. For example, in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, many of the props were made in two sizes. When a character held the larger version of an object, that character appeared smaller than someone holding the smaller version of that same object. Combined with a variety of other visual tricks, this enabled actors to portray characters both smaller (hobbits) and larger (trolls) than humans.
The Photoshop Elements Perspective transformation enables you to simulate perspective in images that don’t have it and remove it from images that have too much of it. First select the area or layer you want to work with, and then choose Image, Transform, Perspective. Drag any of the transform marquee’s handles to apply perspective. When you’re satisfied with the results, click the Commit check mark or press Enter.
Fix Perspective
Let’s give the Perspective transformation a workout on a shot that my husband took at the Temple of Baseball, also known as Fenway Park in Boston. The building looks as though it’s tipping over backward; it can definitely use some help. You can download this picture from the book’s website (it’s called fenway.jpg) and follow along, if you like.
Open the photo and zoom out enough that you can see the entire image (see Figure 12.6).
Choose Image, Transform, Perspective. Photoshop Elements informs you that it can transform only layers and asks if you’d like it to turn the Background layer into a regular layer. Click OK. Then click OK in the New Layer dialog.
Drag the bottom-left corner of the transform marquee to the right, or drag the bottom-right corner to the left. Because both handles move when you’re in Perspective transform mode, it doesn’t matter which one you drag.
Press Ctrl+T. This puts you in Free Transform mode, which we investigate further in a few minutes. Click and drag outside the transform marquee to rotate the whole thing clockwise a few degrees. Now press Enter or click the Commit check mark (see Figure 12.7).
Switch to the Crop tool and trim the image to get rid of the blank corners. If you prefer, you can try to fill in the corners using the Clone Stamp (which we cover in the next hour), but this image is really too detailed to lend itself to that option.
The picture certainly looks better now than it did when Fenway was toppling over (although I’m sure some Yankees fans would disagree). However, it’s a great example of why you should always give yourself some cropping room around the edges of a picture. This photo was already cropped tightly when we started working on it, so when I recropped it, I had to cut off more of the banners than I was really happy with.
Using the Free Transform command, you can perform multiple transformations at once, with any transformation that Photoshop Elements supports (see Figure 12.8). To make it work for you, though, you have to learn some keyboard combinations.
First, choose Image, Transform, Free Transform. Okay, got your transform marquee? Great! Now click and drag any corner handle—you’re resizing the image. If Constrain Proportions is checked in the Options bar, or if you’re pressing Shift, the image maintains its proportions as you resize it. To resize horizontally, drag a side handle; to resize vertically, drag the top or bottom handle.
Next, place the cursor outside the transform marquee, where it turns into a curved, double-headed arrow. Click and drag to rotate the picture in either direction. If you press Shift as you drag, the picture rotates in 15° increments.
Here come the keyboard combinations. To distort in Free Transform mode, press Ctrl and drag a handle. You’ll notice that the cursor is a gray arrowhead when you’re pressing Ctrl. If you add Shift, the arrowhead gains a double arrow, and dragging a side handle skews the selection. Next, add Alt (so now you’re pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift) and drag a corner handle to adjust the selection’s perspective.
Reference Points
When you’re using any Transform command, including Free Rotate (in the Image, Rotate submenu), normally the transformation is based on the center of the image or selection, indicated by a little circle-with-crosshairs icon. It’s called the reference point; it’s the one point in the image that remains in a fixed location while the rest of the image is transformed around it.
You can move the reference point to any of nine different locations on the selection any time that you see the Reference Point Location proxy in the first slot on the Options bar (see Figure 12.9). Click any of the nine points in the proxy to change the reference point’s location.
Now, if you’ve been paying attention as we go along, you’re probably wondering by now, “Why isn’t there an easy way to get all this stuff fixed automatically? That’s the way Photoshop Elements usually works.” And if so, you’re right—Photoshop Elements does generally offer an automated fix alongside manual ways to do the same thing. In this case, however, there’s no way to automate the judgments that you make as you adjust perspective and rotate pictures. However, there is an easier way for you to fix all this stuff yourself. It’s a command called Correct Camera Distortion, and you’ll find it in the Filter menu.
Start with a picture that needs some work, and follow these steps:
Choose Filter, Correct Camera Distortion. Photoshop Elements opens a large dialog with its own toolbox (see Figure 12.10).
If the picture is squeezed in the middle, or if it appears convex, drag the Remove Distortion slider to remove the effect, which is caused by your camera lens. Watch the grid lines as you drag so that you can be sure you’re turning curved lines into straight ones.
By the Way
Because of the way zoom lenses are built, they’re often subject to distortion. When you’re zoomed all the way out, you might end up with barrel distortion, in which vertical lines in the image bow outward like the sides of a barrel. Pincushion distortion, on the other hand, is likely to show up when you’re zoomed all the way in; straight lines bow inward in these images.
If the image seems too dark around the edges, drag the Vignette Amount slider to the right to lighten it; do the opposite if the picture is too bright at the edges. Drag the Vignette Midpoint slider to determine how wide an area is affected by your setting on the Vignette Amount slider (see Figure 12.11).
In the Perspective Control area, first adjust the image angle if it’s tilted. Then you’re free to drag the Vertical Perspective and Horizontal Perspective sliders. When you’re done correcting the perspective, you might need to readjust the Angle slightly (see Figure 12.12).
Finally, use the Scale slider to crop the image so that the blank areas created by your changes no longer show.
The controls at the bottom of the dialog box don’t affect the image—just the appearance of the preview. Show Grid, as you might guess, shows the grid when clicked and hides the grid when cleared; you can click the Color swatch to choose a different grid color. Use the Zoom tool or the zoom controls at the lower-left corner of the preview to zoom in and out on the image.
Because of the vagaries of camera design and simple geometry, it’s easy for pictures to display distortion so that they don’t accurately portray their subjects. As you discovered in this hour, you can use the Transform commands to compensate for these effects or to distort and skew images for artistic effect. Each of the transformations that affect an image’s shape has its own command, but you can execute all these and several other transformations at the same time using Free Transform mode. The quickest way to fix camera-generated distortion, however, is to use the Correct Camera Distortion filter, which can undo several different kinds of image distortion.
How much attention have you paid to the details in this hour? These quiz questions will provide the answer. Afterward, relax with a fun activity that you can do with any of your own photos.
Open a picture that contains recognizable people or buildings, and choose Image, Transform, Free Transform. Using the key combinations listed in this hour, apply several different kinds of transformation to the image. Can you figure out how to twist the photo? Is it possible to flip it using Free Transform?