Community Expert

Answered

Perspective Crop With a Border ?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
April 28, 2021
5 replies
1314 views

This is something I've wanted to be able to do for as long as we've had the Perspective Crop tool.

By way of some background, I like to make stuff, and right now I am making a router table for my workshop. I took this as a casual picture with my phone, for a woodworking forum. Like, I suspect most of the regular posters to this forum, I am a bit OCD when it comes to images and I'd like to square it up. The Perspective Crop Tool should be perfect for this task, but I need to keep some of the border, and there is no easy way that I can think of to do this.

In the past I have experimented with keeping Delete Cropped Pixels unchecked hoping that after I use the PCT I'd be able to add canvas and find the border still there. It isn't.

The best I can do is to create a Work Path around the rectangle I want to square up, and use Free Transform to expand it. This sort of works but you have the usual issue of a un-square aspect ratio producing unequal borders top and bottom to the two sides.

With this much contrast I can get an excellent result with select Subject and then use Modify > Expand which even allows me to get an identical width border all round, but the heavy corner radius is not ideal for locating the PCT corner handles.

That's all I've got. I guess the Work Path comes closest, but it is too clunky. Perhaps if I could create and expand the workpath, and then Ctrl click to select it and simply click on the PCT which automatically cropped and squared the image to the selection, then I'd call that worthy of the 2021 version of Photoshop, (except it would require the GPU so wouldn't work).

Has anybody got a clever idea on how to streamline this process?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Jeff Arola

You could draw out your prespective crop around the object, then expand the area by dragging on the corners of the crop borders.

perspective crop around object

expanded crop by dragging on the sides of the crop borders

completed perspective crop

Semaphoric

Community Expert

Show the grid. Convert the image to a Smart Object. Free Transform to square it up. Check to make sure the hole is still a circle (assuming it is), and tweak as necessary..

Then, just use the regular Crop tool. The original is still tucked away in its SO.

JJMack

Community Expert

Here is what I did. Select subject, invert selection, clear. Select object center round area, clear. Perspective Crop, Add Canvas, add pattern fill layer, scale pattern. You just need to do a good job setting the perspective crop selection. Which is not hard to do with the background removed. The other steps are easy to do. Photoshop sets the selections The image has excellent contrast. You should be more concerned with adding a fence to your router table then being concern with your kitchen laminate.

JJMack

Trevor.Dennis

Author

Community Expert

JJ, I'll work through your method, but I'm going to have to think about it while doing so, because I am not picturing the entire process in my head.

As for the router table, I used the laminated kitchen worktop because they had 1520 x 600 lengths for NZ$119 at a local supplier, and the guys on the Australian Woodworker's Forum were all advocating MDF. I had planed to use two thicknesses of 18mm plywood, but I liked the idea of the Melamine surface, so I followed their advice. It cut fine on the tablesaw (I had a 60 tooth blade fitted) but check out the mess it left after I routed the hole and shoulder for the inset! That is nothing like the sheets of MDF I get from the same store, and I have my doubts that the threaded inserts I planned to use for the retaining and height adjusting screws are going to a) go in without tearing or spliting the wood, and b) last that long if they do. I have those exposed surfaces soaking up Dainish Oil to make them more solid, so I guess I'll see. One thing's for sure, I won't be gluing the worktop to the cabinite sides.

That's way too far OT, so back to Perspective Crop.

BTW I have only been working with wood for about five years, so still learning, but the 40 years I spent as a toolmaker and design engineer at Ford Research gave me a pretty good head start.

jane-e

Community Expert

@Trevor.Dennis wrote:
Has anybody got a clever idea on how to streamline this process?

Trevor, if this were my problem, you would be the person I would ask! But I have to say that I keep wondering if taking a new picture is a possibility?

~ Jane

Trevor.Dennis

Author

Community Expert

@Trevor.Dennis wrote:
Has anybody got a clever idea on how to streamline this process?

Trevor, if this were my problem, you would be the person I would ask! But I have to say that I keep wondering if taking a new picture is a possibility?

~ Jane

By @jane-e

Jane This particular image is not so much the problem. It's more that I have been in this situation multiple times, and wished it worked better. It's a great tool, but I didn't feel I was getting the most out of it.

Jeff Arola

Correct answer

Community Expert

You could draw out your prespective crop around the object, then expand the area by dragging on the corners of the crop borders.

perspective crop around object

expanded crop by dragging on the sides of the crop borders

completed perspective crop

Trevor.Dennis

Author

Community Expert

Jeff I think you have cracked it! You have pointed out functionality I had thought of — I did not know you could drag the sides of the box. In fact you can Alt (Opt) drag the sides or top and bottom to mirror the movement on the opposite side. Plus you can tweak how much each side moves by placing the centre handle.

So offsetting the centre handle gives you something like this (when Alt dragging a side)

Whereas a more central placement gives you the same offset each side

I couldn't make it move all four sides at the same time, but this is much much faster and better than anything I have tried so far, and I would say it makes Perspective Crop as useful as it needs to be.

JJMack

Community Expert

If all you want are even boarders why not just do the perspective crop and then add the canvas boarders just add relatively the same number of pixels to the width and height leave the anchor point centered. If you keep the original boarder material it will be distorted by the crop perspective transform. You may be better off adding a white or transparent border and filling with the border patted or texture from the cropped off texture.

JJMack

Trevor.Dennis

Author

Community Expert

JJ, I think this particular example is not as clear as it could be. The area around the black insert is a repurposed kitchen worktop with Melamine laminate, and not just plain white background. The point I am trying to make is that I have often had situations where the Perspective Crop tool would be useful, but does not work if I want to retain some of the background as a border. I was hoping someone would magic up a clever workaround. If it does not happen I'll probably add it as a suggestion on the Feedback site.

Trevor.Dennis

Author

Community Expert

Here's another thing. It turns out that it is a more complex problem than I realized. The image below shows the result of using Perspective Crop on the Transformed Work Path (second image in my first post). It has squared up relative to the Work Path, but the central rectangle is tapered front to back, and the borders are nothing like equal.

Here's another example. What I did here was make a parallel strip and make three copies. I then laid them around the central rectangle rotating to be flush with it's outline. Then used Perspective Crop using the outside corners of the guide strips I'd used. You can see this gave a much better result. Hmmm... thinking back on it, I think I'd manually squared things up before doing this, so it only had to make minor adjustment.

The original Work Path did stay true to the rectangle after the first Perspective Crop application, so I guess I could repeat the transform and perspective crop. and with much less work to do, it would almost certainly give a much better result.

But what a lot of work to do what should be a simple thing. I don't see there being an easy workaround for this, so I'll go suggest it on the Feedback site.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded