The Adobe Photoshop CS5 Book for Digital Photographers part 27 pot

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