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June 13, 2007
[ WHAT'S NEW IN PHOTOSHOP CS3 ]
MR BROWN, A READER OF THESE PAGES, writes to say: “Photoshop CS3 Photomerge is fantastic! Software of the decade.” And you don’t ignore that sort of enthusiasm, particularly when it is accompanied by some excellent examples.
Photomerge (which is not new to Photoshop CS3, but is vastly improved over earlier versions) is an automated routine that creates panoramas. The idea is to swing the camera around, take several overlapping pictures and then stitch them together on the computer to make a wide and long picture.
Some compact digital cameras help in the process with a dedicated panorama mode that makes it easy to see how each successive shot overlaps the one before.
The problem has always been twofold. One is getting the adjacent frames to match in tone and colour. The other is to correct for the fact that the right hand end of frame one is never the same perspective as the left hand end of frame two. Which means it is always difficult to cover up the seams where the adjacent images blend. Some commercial stitching programs do a good job of fixing these issues but it is a pleasure to have such an outstanding photomerge routine as part of Photoshop.
The process couldn’t be easier. Open the component images and then click on File/Automate/Photomerge. Choose Add Open Files. There are five different types of merge presented and the first is the default for most panoramas. Then go OK and stand back. The panorama in its raw form shows how cleverly the images have been distorted to achieve correct alignment. Seams are invisible.
Once the creation is finished choose Layers/Flatten Image and crop the asymmetrical image to a rectangle. Then give yourself a round of applause. (The panoramic photo of Melbourne at night is merged from four individual images.)
Almost as nifty is the Quick Selection tool. This is used to extract an object from an image to copy and paste somewhere else. CS3 still has the Extract filter with its tedious outline function, but Quick Selection does the job better. You paint roughly inside the object to be extracted and the program finds its edges. It is easy to add or subtract from the selection and then – the pièce de résistance – you open the extracted object in Refine Edge and play around with radius, feather, smooth, expand/contract and contrast until the edge is well defined and fine detail is preserved.
The new Black and White Conversion function does not simply throw away the colour information, as happens if the mode is changed to grey scale. It simulates a range of filters, such as you would use with panchromatic film – red, yellow, green and blue. The dramatic sky and cloud effects produced by red or yellow filters with black and white film are reproduced in the digital medium and the conversion dialogue box splits the source image into red, yellow, green, cyan, blue and magenta channels for fine tuning the tones of the monochrome picture.
The new version of Adobe Camera RAW can be set to open jpeg and tiff files for the same level of image fine-tuning that has hitherto been reserved for the RAW format.
Pity the high price will reserve these delights to the professionals and a few privileged amateurs.
[There is a small collection of panoramas created with Photoshop CS3 Photomerge in the Gallery]
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Posted by terry at June 13, 2007 11:43 PM
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Comments
Great Post
Posted by: Dan at July 9, 2007 04:27 AM
Hi,
this is perhaps not the place to ask for this advice, but here goes...
I have Photoshop Elements v5 and Macromedia Fireworks v8.
I use PSE most of the time.
In Fireworks I can have more than one graphic object on the canvas, in different areas of the canvas, then I can choose Modify > Canvas > Trim Canvas
This automatically trims all four sides of the canvas back to the outer edges of the outermost-positioned graphics, which I find very convenient. Including when you've just applied a drop-shadow to a photo.
Is there a function in PSE for this?
In PSE I can apply a drop shadow to an element on the canvas (Special Effects > Photo Effects > Drop Shadow), but I can't see how to modify the angle, amount and colour of the drop shadow (the way you can in Fireworks). And once it's applied, I have to crop the canvas to the edge of the drop shadow manually by the naked eye, which is tricky compared to the Trim Canvas option in Fireworks.
Does anyone know how to do this in PSE?
Thanks
Dave
Posted by: Dave at August 14, 2007 11:28 AM
Dave: First, I acknowledge complete ignorance of Fireworks, so I can't comment on your experience with that program.
As far as PSE is concerned you only get a set of pre-defined drop shadows that, as far as I have been able to work out, cannot be modified.
In Photoshop itself there is control over shadow opacity, angle, spread, distance, colour etc. It looks as though this is one feature Adobe has crippled in PSE to keep some space between the two programs.
Someone else may have discovered a work-around for drop shadows.
TL
Posted by: Terry at August 15, 2007 01:03 AM