The first Psdtuts+ Design challenge had an amazing turnout with some incredible artwork submitted by talented artists from all over the world. Recently, Psdtuts+ editor Grant Friedman sat down for a Google+ Hangout to discuss a handful of the entries with community moderator and Psdtuts+ author, Melody Nieves. Let’s take a look.
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An Introduction to Adobe InDesign
Do you want to learn to work with Adobe InDesign quickly and painlessly? If you always wanted to work on magazines, books and brochures this is the right place to start your career!
What is InDesign? InDesign is the best tool for designing for print and digital publishing. It is a very powerful application with lots of great features and this is your best chance to learn everything you need from
Professional Photo Retouching with Photoshop
Do you love using Photoshop? Do you want to improve your photo retouch skills and jumpstart your career as a photo retoucher?
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How to Turn a Photograph into a Dynamic Panograph
Panography was created to depict the way we naturally see. The way our eyes pick up on the details of a place or subject, then arrange them into a single image. The scale of detail you choose to create depends on the final image you see. Today, we’re going to take the style and techniques of panography and apply it to images we’ve already taken.
What is a Panograph?
A panograph is a made up of a series of images that are manually assembled together to create a larger image. It’s a technique used to achieve a “what the eye sees” kind of view. Meaning what our eyes see outside the viewfinder are the details of a place.
Our eyes pick up on the smaller things that make up a larger scene. Panography is a way to combine those details into a single graphic image.
Traditionally, panography is achieved by shooting many images of a location and then manually arranging each image. This tutorial will show you how to create the same panographic style with an image from your library.
Choosing An Image
Choosing the right image is an important step because some will work better for panography than others. Architecture, urbanscapes, arenas, and large events are great for their leading lines and a wide view. Action is another great style because you can manipulate individual images to create a sense of movement.
Go through your images and envision how they’d look as a panograph. It takes some imagination. Look for aspects of the image you want to emphasize. Look for elements that don’t need to be there.
In the image I selected, the top left and right corners depicting the background aren’t necessary for the panograph. In fact, I’d like to emphasize the spray the surfer is making and the photographer who’s shooting him.
Those will be areas I can layer separate images that then wander into a white background. This image isn’t the super wide view you see in a lot of panographs. It works because of the action and the existing composition.
Now let’s dive into the actual steps in Photoshop. The steps are very simple, it just takes a little focus and time.
Creating the Panograph
1. Preparing Your Photoshop Workspace
Open your chosen image. We’ll be keeping this image open the whole time so we can copy selected sections from it and paste them to a new document.
Create a new document and have it open next to your original image. Set the size to be slightly larger than the original image so you have room to work. If you need to find the size of your original image, go to Image > Image Size and it will show you.
2. Create a Selection
Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) in the toolbar. In the options panel, select a Style of “Fixed Ratio” and set the Width to 3 and the Height to 2. This is the normal proportion that a DSLR shoots, but you can play around with other ones if you want.
Then create a selection over the most important part of the image. This will allow you to work outward and centralize the focus of the panograph. The size of the selection will just depend on your eye.
If it’s too small you’ll have too many images to layer. And if it’s too big you might loose the intricacy that makes a panograph wonderful.
3. Copy and Paste
Copy the selection by pressing Cmd+C on your keyboard. Move over to your other document and Paste (Cmd+V). Then change the Opacity in the Layers Panel to 50%. Move this layer in place using the Move Tool (V).
4. Free Transform
This is one of the most important steps. It’s what will make your panograph a panograph and not a re-assembled image.
Use the Free Transform Tool (Cmd+T) to rotate the layer. Rotate it anywhere from 0 to 45 degrees (just using your eye to judge the angle). Each layer will be rotated different directions and have different angles, but keep in mind that overlapping these layers is what creates the panographic look.
5. Repeating Steps
Move back to your original image and hit (M) on your key. This selects the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Drag the selection over another part of the image – making sure to overlap the previous area you had selected. Overlapping is essential to the overall look.
Copy (Cmd+C) the selection and Paste it (Cmd+V) on the panograph document. Change the opacity to 50%, rotate using the Free Transform Tool (Cmd+T), and overlap into place with the Move Tool (V). Just the same steps you did with the first layer.
Continue repeating these steps until the panograph is complete. If you’re working zoomed in, make sure to periodically zoom out and look at the image as a whole. You may find some layers need adjusting.
