158
O
BJECTS DON’T ALWAYS FIT INTO
the scene as neatly as we’d like them
to: frequently, the perspective needs to be
adjusted to fit in with the background.
The montage above was for the front
page of the Guardian, and was to illustrate
the relative heights of London buildings – the
big colorful one at the back is the proposed
Vortex skyscraper. The rest of the buildings
came from a variety of sources, and had to
be adapted to make them look as if they all
belonged in the same visual space. There was
a lot of dividing up into planes and shearing
involved, exactly as described here.
1
A typical suburban street scene. I photographed this with
plenty of spare road in front, so it would be easy to add in
extra vehicles, pedestrians or galumphing space monsters as
required. No nearby corners – so one point perspective.
7
Well, the front may look OK, but the back end’s all
over the place. Unlink the layers, then draw a marquee
selection around the back end of the truck. Be sure to place
the right edge of the marquee so it aligns precisely with the
corner of the truck nearest to us.
4
Let’s bring the truck back, and draw some perspective
lines (in yellow) on a new layer attached to it. Right away,
we can see the problem: the bottom line should be going
upwards, not crossing the red perspective line.
Correcting perspective
6
Getting into perspective
159
2
When this dirty white truck is placed in the scene, we
can see that something’s not quite right. It’s hard to pin it
down, but there’s a feeling of unease about the composition.
Let’s hide the van and find out why.
3
With the truck hidden, we can now draw in perspective
lines using the Line tool, following the angles of the road
and the roof line. Where they meet is the horizon, here drawn
in green. Note that it’s at head height on the doors!
8
Now enter Free Transform once more, grab the center
handle on the left side and drag it upwards. The top edge
of this side should be aligned with the angle of the roof of the
house directly behind it – another clue to drawing this scene
in perspective.
9
The truck itself may be a convenient rectangular box,
but the same can’t be said for the wheels. There’s almost
always a little tidying-up to be done in cases like this; here, a
simple brush with a hard-edged eraser can fix the wheel. And
a well-placed shadow can hide a number of errors!
5
In fact, this is how we’d position this truck in order
for it to be in the correct perspective for the street. I’d
obviously photographed it from a low viewpoint, which is why
it’s now floating in the air! Let’s see how to fix it.
6
Link the truck and its perspective line layers together.
Now enter Free Transform, and move the center marker
on top of the vanishing point: then grab the middle handle on
the left side and shear it downwards.
HOT TIP
With practice, you
don’t need to draw
in the perspective
lines at all: after a
while you get to
the stage where
you can imagine
where they are
without having to
see them exactly.
Looking at step 2,
it’s possible to see
at a glance that
the bottom edge
of the truck side
is at a contrary
angle to the low
wall behind it, and
to the edge of the
road; correcting
the perspective
can be done purely
visually.
How to Cheat in Photoshop CC
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