Skip to main content
harleypublisher
Participating Frequently
July 20, 2021
Answered

Putting a photo on a building wall with the correct perspective.

  • July 20, 2021
  • 7 replies
  • 30121 views

I am attmpting to take a photo of the side of a building, viewed from that angle as if looking from the street. Then, greate a fram that will fit a portion of that building wall.

Next, within that frame I need to insert a photo, overlaying the side of the building. But, I need to have a perspective that will show the angle of the photo as it appears when looking at the building from that angle.

 

Maybe another way to express what we are doing is this: We have a series of historical photos taken of cour community dating back to the 1980s. Our plan is to use those old photos as a basis to create murals that we can paint onto the side of the buildings in town.

We want to be able to show the artists hoe these wall murals will look when viwed by a person walking (or driving) on one of our streets.

I have attached an image of one of the walls as well as a sample of one of the historic images that we would like to impose onto one of the walls.

We are using Photoshop 2021 on a Mac.

Correct answer Rafael Aviles

Here is a good video tutorial showing another way of doing what you ask:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MM2_oVDi_o&t=677s

 

 

7 replies

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Community Expert
April 4, 2024

I am going to throw in another idea, since someone has woken this old thread. An idea I think way more fast and simple than some other ideas in the thread.

 

We have the tractor cutout and the building.

We make the tractor layer a Smart Object so that a) we keep the handles in their original corner locations, and b) because it is central to making this method work. 

 

Note: I copied the foreground grass to a new layer at the top of the stack, so bottom of the tractor can be placed behind it.

 

The OP did not say how large the image should appear on the building, so I am going assume about 70% of the height of the building.

Double click the Smart Object to open in a new window so we can edit it, and add Relative 30% to the height of the canvas.

 

The bounding box will now surround an area relative to the full height of the building, and we can Ctrl/Cmd drag the corner handles into place keeping perspective close to spot on.

 

We can improve this in a couple of ways. 1) If you have Windows and Lazy Nezumi Pro, you can use its Vanishing lines preset to draw some accurate perspective lines as a guide.  Note: I have a Curves layer which I have turned off in this screen shot.  This was to temporarily increase contrast between the blocks and concrete pointing so I could more accurately position the lower Vanashing Line.

 

We can now get the perspective spot on when placing the tractor, and turn off the guide lines.

 

If you don't have Lazy Nezumi Pro, then a) I am sad for you, and b) use the grid graphic that we should all have in a CC Library.  Open the SO to edit, and place your grid layer at the top of the stack.  Use that to place the tractor on the wall. Open the SO to edit again, and turn off the grid layer.

 

 

 

 

 

Participant
April 4, 2024
20240405_015956.jpg
Rafael Aviles
Rafael AvilesCorrect answer
Legend
July 21, 2021

Here is a good video tutorial showing another way of doing what you ask:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MM2_oVDi_o&t=677s

 

 

harleypublisher
Participating Frequently
July 21, 2021

Thank you Rafael! Great video. Funny, maybe a year or two ago I came across a video that showed how to do this. The process was amazingly quick and simple, but I neglected to "bookmark" the video!

Rafael Aviles
Legend
July 21, 2021

You are welcome!

 

Conrad_C
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 21, 2021

You’re getting some good options because there’s more than one way to do this, you just have to pick one.

 

Here is a quick demo of another way to get a first draft done in about a minute. You just need three layers and a mask, and it’s adjustable.

 

 

Notes:

  • Dragging the Quick Selection tool over the wall rapidly isolates a selection of it. 
  • Adding a Solid Color Fill layer automatically creates a mask of that selection, so that your “wall paint” color affects only the wall, not the entire scene. 
  • Because the wall paint is a Solid Color Fill layer, you can change its color at any time by double-clicking it, as is done frequently during the demo. 
  • After the farmer photo is added as a layer with drag-and-drop, Edit > Free Transform is used to fit it to the wall. The perspective distortion is done by dragging a Free Transform corner handle while holding down the Command key (Mac) or Ctrl key (Windows). [CORRECTION: You can also do this more simply, without remembering any keyboard shortcuts, by choosing Edit > Transform > Perspective. The way I did it was a more advanced way, using the key press to modify how Free Transform works.]
  • The Solid Color Fill layer and farmer photo layer are blended with the wall (letting the wall texture show through) using the blending mode menu and Opacity value in the Layers panel; adjust these until they represent the mural visualization you want. 

 

The animation quality is a little low because I had to compress it a lot to get it under the 10MB limit for an inline graphic in a post.

harleypublisher
Participating Frequently
July 21, 2021

Wow, Conrad! That's awesome! You're right, a lot of good options. I really appreciate everyone's help!

 

Participating Frequently
July 21, 2021

Open the picture and add a blank layer. Use filter-Vanishing Point to make a grid of the wall. Click the bar symbol (upper left corner) and from the dropdown choose Export Grids to Photohop. Paste your mural on a layer above the grid and use distort to match the grid lines.

harleypublisher
Participating Frequently
July 21, 2021

Thank you! I'll give that a try.

Trevor.Dennis
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 21, 2021

What projector will you be using?  How much 'keystone' correction does it have?  My projector does not have any keystone correction because it uses lens off-set like a technical camera, so if I am understanding you correctly, that sort of projector would not work for you.

 

So it might come down to producing a test image like below and projecting that on the building wall to see how it fits, and if you can correct any keystone error, and then using that as a guide to setting up your images.

A lot depends on the height of the projector of course.  If it is located half the height of the wall and perpendicular to the wall's centre point, then it will not need any correction.  Without being 100% clear on your objectives, we can only guess at how best to achieve them.

harleypublisher
Participating Frequently
July 21, 2021

Thank you, Trevor! We're not wanting to use a projector, as what we are wanting to do at this phase is prepare printed images to use for presenting our concept to the owners of the buildings and to our town officials.

I hadn't considered using a projector as a guide for the artists that will be doing this project as a means to guide them with their firsts outlines, though. That is a good point that I'll present to them.

J E L
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 20, 2021

@harleypublisher So this is a one minute example I made just to find out if this is what you are after or do you want something else altogether?

 

harleypublisher
Participating Frequently
July 21, 2021

One minute? WOW! Jain, that is exact what we would like to do.

J E L
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 21, 2021

Oh gosh, ha. That's great. Glad I figured out what you are after. I can outline the steps I took for you tomorrow as it is late for me now. Anyone else reading this who knows how to is welcome to do the same in the meantime. BTW, these are just for concept/preview, right? How perfect do the finals need to be?