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Photoshop Tips
Retouching an Image Using Vanishing Point in Photoshop
By Doug Nelson
Dateline: September 15, 2005
Version: Photoshop CS
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What do you do when you need to clone or patch in an image and the source is too large or small due to
the perspective? You could scale and distort to fit, but the Vanishing Point filter first introduced in Photoshop CS2 makes that tedious task almost as fun as playing a video game.
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I wanted to retouch my image by
removing the lion statue and closing
the windows in the lower-right
corner. Due to the receding distance,
none of the windows were exactly the
same size. After I copied and pasted
windows, I’d have some tricky resizing
to do. And forget about cloning! With
the Vanishing Point filter, I made quick
work of it all.
To remove the lion statue, I would
first need to cover the lion with a window
from the row behind it. I opened
lion.jpg (click here to download it) and saved it as a PSD file.
I made a new blank layer to give me a
separate layer for Vanishing Point edits
and allow me to keep the original image
intact. To access the Vanishing Point
filter, I chose from the top portion of
the Filters menu in the same area as the
Extract and Liquify filters.
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With the dialog box open, I selected
the Create Plane tool (second tool in the
dialog box), which is designed to create
a perspective plane that encompasses
the area you want to edit. I clicked with
the tool to place four points in a large
rectangular area around the window
and the lion. (Editing planes can extend
outside the image area.) The filter will
not work properly if the perspective
plane isn’t set accurately, so I fine-tuned
my plane by selecting the edit plane tool
from the top of the toolbox and dragging
the plane’s stretch nodes on the edges
and corners until the perspective was
correct.
Editing planes are color-coded
as you create them, and you can
only fully edit on a blue plane. If
the plane is red, the perspective
cannot be calculated. If it’s yellow,
it can be calculated, but not enough
to tear off perpendicular planes.
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 With the editing plane set, I selected
the Vanishing Point marquee tool and
made a selection of the source—the
unobstructed window in the row on the far left. The tool is just like the regular
Marquee tool with the big exception that
it intuitively follows an editing plane’s
perspective. I Shift-Option/Alt-dragged
the selection to replace the window behind
the lion with the selected window.
The Option/Alt and Shift keys serve the
same purpose as they do in most commands:
Option/Alt copies the selected
area, and Shift constrains the selection
to the horizontal axis—but with perspective!
To adjust the selection to fit, I used
the filter’s transform tool, which also
maintains perspective. Then I pressed
Command/Ctrl-D to Deselect.
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With the window in place, I used the
Vanishing Point stamp tool to remove
the rest of the lion. This tool has three
significant differences from the regular
Clone Stamp tool. First, like the filter’s
other editing tools, it’s perspective-aware
and changes shape to match the
editing plane. Second, after Option/Alt-clicking
to designate the source, the
cursor converts to the pixel data of the
area sourced. Third, you can set the tool
to work like a perspective-aware Healing
brush.
Here, I set the Heal option at the
top of the dialog box to Off, then Option/
Alt-clicked a source area and cloned over
the lion like I would have done with the
regular Clone Stamp tool. I still needed
to eliminate the bottom of the lion, but
it was outside of the editing plane, so I
pulled down the middle stretch node
with the edit plane tool to extend it over
the lion, finished cloning, and clicked OK.
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To close the windows in the lower-right
corner, I selected the Background
layer in the Layers palette and created
a new layer, then re-opened Vanishing
Point. My editing plane was still there.
In fact, it would remain even after closing
and reopening the file until I deleted or
changed it. But now, my edits would be
on the new layer. I used the Zoom tool to
look closely at the row of windows, then
drew another editing plane. (Vanishing
Point allows for multiple planes.) I selected the
far-left closed window of the row with
the Marquee tool, and Shift-Option/Alt-dragging
it over a window. After that, I
used the Stamp tool to clean up the edits.
Unlike the rest of Photoshop, the
Vanishing Point filter supports multiple
Undos (Command/Ctrl-Z).
Not only does the filter’s stamp
tool have a Heal mode, but so does
its Brush tool. For the Marquee tool,
the Heal mode converts it into a
perspective-aware patch tool. This
has no Photoshop equivalent, so
have fun experimenting!
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You can drag any stretch node of
an existing plane handle with the
Create Plane tool and it will tear off
a perpendicular plane.
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The final image is shown at left.
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Doug Nelson is a freelance writer,
technical editor, and founder of
RetouchPRO.com, an online community
for photo retouchers.
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