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Cloning, duplicating and transforming with perspective Marquee selections: copying, pasting and duplicating
But while cloning is clearly the main advantage of Vanishing Point, it's not the only one. Nor is the Stamp tool necessarily the only way to clone elements of your image. Using the Marquee tool to make a selection, you can easily duplicate elements of your image and move them around to different planes. This is similar to standard cloning except that you have the ability to make and feather your selection and duplicate it multiple times, while also having the advantage of constraining the element horizontally or vertically by holding down the Shift key, as with moving elements in the main Photoshop interface.
The following movie shows an example of making a selection in a perspective plane, then duplicating the object by dragging it with the Option key held down. As I move the object onto the second plane, the perspective shifts. And, as with the Stamp tool, the Marquee tool provides you with a Heal option to match the color of the new surface to which you move your object. (In this example, you'll see the color shift when the object comes to rest in its new position.)
Notice that as I drew the marquee selection, the box was square to the plane in question. Any marquee selection will follow the perspective of the plane on which it's draw, even if it goes outside the bounds of the plane.
Notice also that after I moved the first selection, I was able to undo the move, then make a new selection and move the second object. Vanishing Point has multiple levels of undo, so you're never stuck with your mistakes. Plus the elements within the Marquess selection can continue to be moved even after you release them and after the Heal is applied until you make a new selection.
In addition to this duplication method, you can also create and manipulate selections using copy and paste. Why would this matter? Well, it's not just selections within Vanishing Point that you can copy and paste. You can copy the pixels from any image (or layer within your document) and paste them into Vanishing Point This means that you're not limited simply to manipulation of the existing layer. You can also do real compositing here.
For example, let's say I want to make a selection in Vanishing Point using our wooden deck, like this.
I can then paste it into a different image using Vanishing Point, and it reinterprets the perspective to match the new plane to which it's being attached.
All with a simple copy and paste. I didn't do anything to this image except paste it and move the pasted element into place by dragging it. The perspective adjusted itself, and the Heal function adjusted the color. OK, I did do one other thing to it: I scaled it. But we're saving transformations for later.
I showed you an example of copying and pasting from one Vanishing Point element to another. But you don't have to copy elements from Vanishing Point. You can also simply copy selections from your image and paste them in. Vanishing Point will assume the selection comes from a flat plane perpendicular to the "camera," and adjust perspective accordingly. In this way you can place text (rasterized) or any other pixel-based element into your composition and then manipulate it in 3D.
In the example below, I've create some text on a new layer.
Then I copy it and paste it into my background layer in Vanishing Point, and voila! The Budweiser's ready to flow!
A few additional notes on the Marquee tool. Aside from what you've already seen, the Marquee tool also provides you with the following options:
? Feather, allowing you to soften the edges of a selection;
? Opacity, which, of course, lets you adjust the opacity of a selection before or after pasting it;
? Heal on, off or in "Luminance" mode, just as with the Stamp tool;
? And "Move Mode" options for setting your selection as either the source or the destination.
Transformations
Vanishing Point also offers a Transform tool. What this allows you to do is to make modifications to anything you select with the Marquee tool or paste into Vanishing Point. In the text example above, when I pasted it in and placed it on a plane, the text was actually reversed.
But selecting the Transform tool and clicking its "Flip" option, I was able to correct this. (The "Flop" option seen in the screen shot below transforms the object vertically.)
In addition, the Transform tool provides direct manipulation of a marquee selection, including scaling and rotating.
These transformations can be particularly useful when you're duplicating a selection and you need the perspective of a multi-faced object to jibe with your flat perspective plane. For example, in the image below, I've duplicated the door on the right and moved it to the left face of the building. But you can see that the perspective of the inner door frame goes a bit non-Euclidean on us.
So I simply mirror-flip it, and now our sanity points are spared. (Call of Cthulhu? Anyone? No? Okay....)
And the rest
The rest of the features in Vanishing Point are fairly straightforward. You have an Eyedropper tool for selecting colors; a Hand tool for navigating; and a Zoom tool for zooming in or out of your image. The last of the major tools is the Paint Brush, but this isn't the full-fledge Paint Brush found in the main Photoshop application. Instead, it gives you just the standard round tip, with options for diameter and hardness. The brush does paint with perspective when you paint on a plane, so you might start with a small brush that grows as the plane comes toward the camera. It also provides opacity settings and an option for healing.
In our next look at the new goodies in Photoshop CS2, we'll explore the new image warping feature. If you have any questions in the meantime--about CS2 or any Photoshop-related issue--be sure to visit me in the Adobe Photoshop forum by clicking here.
Source:Digital Media Online.
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