Changing perspective

During my last Photoshop Online Training course, a student asked me a question that I had never been asked before, “Can you use Photoshop to change the perspective of the camera angle?” Specifically, in the photo below I took during carnival in Venice, he wanted to know if there is a technique in Photoshop whereby it can be made to look like the photographer was kneeling on the stone street and shooting from a lowered perspective. In so many situations, a low angle is the better approach for photographing all kinds of subjects, from wildlife to fashion models. The low angle gives the subject great stature and a stronger presence. Compare the picture on this page with the image on the next page and you can see the latter looks like I moved in close with a wide angle lens and took the shot kneeling on the ground. I would call both images successful, but the ‘wide angle’ version is, to me, more dramatic and more compelling.

After thinking about the question for a few moments, the solution came to me. Here are the steps in Photoshop.

1. Use Select > all to put the marching ants around the entire photograph.

2. Go to the pulldown menu command Edit >

transform > perspective.

3. A box forms around the picture. Pull the lower right handle of the box horizontally to the right, or pull the lower left handle of the box to the left. This symmetrically widens the image at the base which simulates the convergance of vertical lines typical of a wide angle lens used from a low perspective. However, the image will appear compressed from top to bottom.

4. Choose Select > all again, and then select Edit > transform > scale. This also puts a box around the image. Grab the top middle handle and pull it up to elongate the image. This results in a perfect transformation in perspective. §