|
The city and countryside of Chartres, France,
are dominated by the magnificent cathedral. Visible from 15
miles away, the cathedral grows taller with each step closer one
takes. By the time I reached the vantage point of this photo, I
knew some perspective correction would be needed in Photoshop.
I set up my camera with 24mm wide angle attached
on a tripod and used the self-timer to ensure a steady, long
exposure in Program mode (about two seconds, I would guess).
While I made several exposures, this one was the best but for
some reason, the tripod head slipped a bit and left the
cathedral on a slight tilt.
And its spires ARE soaring toward heaven as
intended by its builders, but not in an architecturally pleasing
fashion due to the camera pointing up.
Again, for this tutorial I have sent the image
it its own layer (Command/Control-J), erased the background to
white and created a larger canvas size.
With the image layer selected and unlocked,
choose the Move tool (V) and then the Free Transform function
(Command/PC: Control-T). The first step is to rotate the image
to the right. I pulled down a guide from the ruler bar to the
left edge of the lawn and judged my rotation to that.
Place the cursor outside the Transform box and
it will turn into a Rotate arrow. Drag the arrow down and to the
right to achieve the correct rotation. Do not click return.
Now it's time to correct the falling-away
perspective. Click and hold the upper-right corner transform
handle and hold down the Shift-Command-Option keys
(Shift-Control-Alt). Now drag the handle to the right until the
towers assume their proper perspective.
Note that the cathedral has become more squat. I
drag down the center bottom handle to restore its original lofty
height.
The image is now a free-form shape and needs to
be cropped. Choose the Crop tool (C) and work from the narrowest
corner of the important part of the image (lower right in this
case). I wanted to include both towers in their entirety so my
crop left a tiny wedge of the white background.
Fortunately, the sky is a nearly total black
which makes for a simple application of the Clone tool (S),
Clone in the nearby sky, working carefully with a smaller, hard
paintbrush to work around the tip of the tower.
And there you have the finished cathedral
in a lot less time than it took the original builders. I would I
could show you some images of the stunning stained glass for
which Chartres Cathedral is famous but our visit was accompanied
by heavy overcast and rain. This night shot was the best I could
hope for. |