ptg Continued 241Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers 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. BRAD MOORE BRAD MOORE Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 242 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers 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. Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 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. 243Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems Continued The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 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 ef fect, 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. 244 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Download from www.wowebook.com ptg After (the reflection is gone)Before (notice the reflection—most visible in the right eye) 245Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 246 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers 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. BRAD MOORE BRAD MOORE Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 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 247Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems Continued The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 248 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers 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). Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 249Chapter 9Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers 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 Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 250 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers 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) Download from www.wowebook.com . Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Download from www.wowebook.com ptg 246 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Fixing. Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Download from www.wowebook.com ptg After (the reflection is gone)Before (notice the reflection—most visible in the right eye) 245Chapter. from www.wowebook.com ptg 242 Chapter 9 Fixing Common Problems The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers Step Three: Holding the Shift key will help get the align ment of the two layers