Locked lesson.
About this lesson
This is part one of a two part tutorial that sets up an animated time lapse look. It is a useful tutorial on the tasks of manipulating multiple image size and placement.
Exercise files
There are no related exercise files for this lesson, or we cannot provide them due to copyright issues.
Quick reference
Topic Time Lapse Part 1
Stack Load and organize images in a horizontal line
When to use
This is part one of a two part tutorial that sets up an animated time lapse look.
It is a useful tutorial on the tasks of manipulating multiple image size and placement.
Instructions
Loading multiple images into the one document
- Under the file scripts menu choose load files into stack.
- Browse and find the files you want.
- Press open to load them.
Resize the images
- Enter the transform mode shortcut key 'T'.
- With larger images use the crop tool, shortcut key 'C'.
Extend out the canvass horizontally
- Zoom out to give room.
- Use the crop tool, shortcut key 'C' and drag out the canvas horizontally so that there is enough room for all the images.
Arrange images
- Use the move tool shortcut key ‘M’.
- In conjunction with transform mode; shortcut key 'T'.
- Make sure that the images overlap.
- Duplicate first image and arrange last (for loop in animation).
Adjust objects within the image
- Choose the content aware move tool.
- Drag around to create a selection around the object.
- Drag image to new location.
- Use spot healing brush to clean up rough spots.
Create transitions (for each image)
- Create mask.
- Use gradient tool on mask (black to transparent).
- Drag the transition on a few times to build transition.
- 00:04 I'm gonna show you guys a very simple technique on how you can
- 00:07 blend multiple images together.
- 00:09 Just like the image that you see in front of you right here.
- 00:11 These images are gonna be used in the next video to create a nice time lapse like
- 00:15 you're seeing playing on the screen right now.
- 00:18 So, to get these images into Photoshop, there are a few ways you can do it.
- 00:21 But one method that a lot of people don't use is under the File > Scripts menu, and
- 00:25 then you can choose Load Files into Stack.
- 00:28 This will allow you to browse your images, select all the ones that you want,
- 00:31 load it into a single document and then press Open.
- 00:34 And then once you press OK, Photoshop's going to take those images,
- 00:37 put them into one document, and layer them on top of each other.
- 00:41 And as you can see here in the Layers panel I have image one, two, three, and
- 00:45 four, now obviously they're different sizes.
- 00:47 So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna resize this image,
- 00:49 which is our largest image, down to around the size of the smallest image, or
- 00:54 at least this size right over here.
- 00:55 I'm gonna press Return or Enter and then with my Crop tool,
- 00:59 shortcut key C, I am simply going to bring this in just like that.
- 01:02 And it is okay if I crop off a little bit of the image,
- 01:04 because that can always be adjusted later on,
- 01:07 as long as you have delete cropped pixels turned off on your options bar.
- 01:12 So, Return or Enter to accept the crop and if I turn off the visibility of this layer
- 01:16 and back on these layers, you can see that some of them don't fit perfectly, so
- 01:20 if you want you can grab the Crop tool one more time and
- 01:23 actually bring that in, but really it's not too necessary at this point.
- 01:26 Because I am using images from shutterstock.com even after cropping,
- 01:30 I still have a width of 3,000 and a height of around 2,000 so
- 01:34 these are pretty large images.
- 01:35 Now in terms of the blending process, I want to create a nice transition from
- 01:38 a blue sky, to a sunset, down to the night sky and
- 01:42 then back to a sunrise which will then transition back into the blue sky.
- 01:46 So obviously we're going to need a little bit more room than what we have here, so
- 01:50 I'm going to grab my Crop tool one last time, shortcut key C, and
- 01:53 I'm going to zoom out by holding down my space bar along with the Alt or
- 01:56 Option key, and then I'm going to grab the right side of the crop handle and
- 02:00 drag it all the way this way.
- 02:02 So we have a nice amount of room to transition our photos.
- 02:05 Again, press Return or Enter and at this point I wanna grab my next image and
- 02:09 move it beside and possibly even on top of the blue sky.
- 02:12 So I'm gonna grab my Move tool, shortcut key V,
- 02:14 I'm gonna select that next layer in the Layers panel,
- 02:17 drag it on top of the blue sky and then simply move it over to the right, and
- 02:22 I can hold down my Shift key to constrain it horizontally, just like that.
- 02:25 And when you're moving it, let me move this down just a little bit, you do
- 02:28 wanna leave a little bit of an overlap so we can transition the two images nicely.
- 02:32 So I'm gonna place this one right here, and
- 02:34 we can always move it later if it doesn't fit properly.
- 02:36 Now I'm gonna grab the next image, which is the night sky,
- 02:39 I'm gonna move this one on top of the stack, and then over to the right.
- 02:44 And again we do wanna leave a little bit of overlap.
- 02:47 Now for this image here we do wanna do a little bit of editing before we proceed.
- 02:51 So I'm gonna zoom back in,
- 02:52 now if we do the transition from here to here we're gonna lose part of the moon,
- 02:56 and you're also noticing that we can't see the clouds that well.
- 02:59 So how do we fix this?
- 03:00 Well there's a tool in Photoshop that was introduced in Photoshop CS4.
- 03:04 Under the Edit menu you can choose Content Aware Scale, and
- 03:07 this will allow you to scale down your image without losing much detail.
- 03:11 You're noticing as I'm scaling it, the moon stays circular,
- 03:15 it doesn't get squished like it would when you're scaling normally.
- 03:18 That will allow us to fit the moon and the clouds in the same document.
- 03:22 And when I have it nicely scaled I'm gonna press Return or
- 03:25 Enter on my keyboard to apply that transformation.
- 03:28 Now depending on the size of the image, a transformation like this
- 03:31 may take a few seconds, or even a few minutes if you have a slow computer.
- 03:34 Now the next thing we need to worry about is where the moon is located.
- 03:37 Like I mentioned, if we do the transition from here to around here,
- 03:40 to blend these two images nicely together, that moon is likely to be faded out and
- 03:45 we don't want that.
- 03:46 There are a few tools that we can use to deal with this issue, including the clone
- 03:49 stamp or the patch tool, but I'm gonna use one of the newer tools in Photoshop, and
- 03:53 it's located in the tools bar where the Patch Tool also is, and
- 03:56 I'm gonna choose the Content Aware Move Tool.
- 03:58 And this will very simply allow you to grab an object and
- 04:01 move it to a new location.
- 04:02 And it starts off very similar to a Lasso tool where you can just drag around to
- 04:06 create a selection around the object you want to move, just like that.
- 04:09 I'm gonna change the adaptation to Loose, and I am simply going to
- 04:13 grab this moon and move it over to a new location, somewhere right around there,
- 04:17 and Photoshop is going to start doing all of these calculations, and in a second,
- 04:21 you are going to see that Photoshop has taken the moon and moved it
- 04:24 to a new location, just like that, and then command or control d to deselect.
- 04:28 And then if you are left with any rough edges,
- 04:30 you can grab your spot healing brush.
- 04:32 I am going to simply enlarge the brush, just like this.
- 04:34 I want to make it nice and soft, enlarge it a little bit more, and
- 04:38 then I want to brush around the area that was a little bit rough, just like this,
- 04:41 right around the moon, and then Photoshop is going to take a look at
- 04:44 the surrounding area and do its best to give you a nice smooth result.
- 04:48 And there you have it, now here's the before, and here's the after.
- 04:51 There's a little bit of a rough edge right here, but I can decrease the size of
- 04:54 this spot healing brush and I can simply brush around this area just like this, and
- 04:58 hopefully Photoshop in a second or
- 05:00 two will smooth out the area just like you see there.
- 05:03 So perfect, now this image is dealt with,
- 05:04 now if I grab my Move tool again I can move it, and I'm gonna make sure it
- 05:07 overlaps nicely with the image to the left, just like that.
- 05:11 So now we can move on to the next image.
- 05:13 I'm gonna zoom right back out, just like I did before.
- 05:15 I'm gonna grab my final image in the Layers panel,
- 05:17 move it on top of the stack, and shift it over to the right.
- 05:20 Now, this one's a little bit smaller than the rest, but it's not too much smaller.
- 05:24 So I can safely Cmd or
- 05:25 Ctrl+T to enter Free Transform Mode, and bring it back up just a little bit.
- 05:29 Return or Enter to accept the changes.
- 05:31 And once again, I do want to make sure that it overlaps nicely.
- 05:35 Now, taking a look at the images that we have, this image here,
- 05:38 the second image, is a little bit too small.
- 05:40 Which, after we do all of our blending,
- 05:42 we're not going to be left with much of an image.
- 05:44 I'm gonna select this image, hold down Cmd or Ctrl and
- 05:46 click on it, and all I'm gonna do is enlarge this image.
- 05:48 So I'm gonna enter Free Transform Mode, grab the top left handle, and
- 05:52 then drag it up just like this.
- 05:54 It will lose a little bit of quality, but it won't be too bad.
- 05:57 And once that's done, press Return or Enter, and
- 05:59 then I'm gonna move it into place, somewhere right around here again.
- 06:02 I do want to make sure that there's a little bit of an overlap over here.
- 06:05 I want that sun showing, but a little bit lower because the sun will be setting.
- 06:09 And then once that's done I can go and
- 06:10 make sure that everything else is in place.
- 06:12 So I'm going to move this one over here, grab this one here and
- 06:15 move it over to the right just a little bit, right about here.
- 06:18 Now I have run out of space, so
- 06:19 I can enter the Crop the tool and drag this handle over to the right.
- 06:23 Now I'm actually going to go all the way over this way,
- 06:26 because what I need to do now is make a duplicate of the blue sky.
- 06:30 So in my Layers panel I'm going to grab this layer, I'm going to hold down Alt or
- 06:33 Option with my Shift key, and then drag it over to the right.
- 06:36 And I also want to make sure to move it to the top of the layer stack, and
- 06:39 then position it in place just like this.
- 06:41 This way when we're creating our animation, if we want it to loop,
- 06:44 it will be a nice seamless video.
- 06:46 Now this last image here is a little bit too small, as well, so one more time,
- 06:49 I'm going to transform it just a little bit.
- 06:52 Move this image over to the right and then I can grab my Crop tool and
- 06:57 pull this in a little bit.
- 06:58 Now I do want to pay attention to where it starts over here, where it cuts off, and
- 07:02 then where it ends here.
- 07:03 So looking back right about there,
- 07:06 that should give us a nice loop when we do create the animation, but
- 07:09 we can always go back later on and make changes if necessary.
- 07:13 So now that all the images are in place,
- 07:15 let me show you how simple it is to actually blend them together.
- 07:18 I'm gonna zoom back in, space bar and Cmd or Ctrl and then click.
- 07:22 I want to make sure to grab this image here,
- 07:24 the image on top which is our second image, and I want to add a layer mask.
- 07:27 So at the bottom of our Layers panel, I'm going to click on the Add Layer Mask
- 07:30 icon which will give us a blank layer mask.
- 07:33 And to blend one image to another, we basically want to take a black
- 07:36 gradient which will allows us to fade the active image on the edge.
- 07:40 So I'm going to grab the Gradient Tool in the Tools bar right here, and
- 07:43 at the top I wanna make sure it's set to Foreground to Transparent.
- 07:46 I wanna make sure it's set to Linear, and
- 07:49 then I wanna make sure that the color is set to appear black.
- 07:52 And once that's done, you can go to the edge of your image or
- 07:54 even a little bit to the left, hold down your Shift key and
- 07:57 then drag to the right, and you're gonna notice that image starts to fade away.
- 08:01 Now what you may want to do is go a little bit more to the left and
- 08:04 create your grain a few times so you get a nice gradual transition, just like this.
- 08:10 And you'll see that nicely fades from one image to another.
- 08:13 And because we use a nice long gradient, we don't have a very sharp result,
- 08:17 like you might have had if you just went from the edge right over to the right.
- 08:21 So now this image has been faded.
- 08:23 I'm going to hold down space bar, pan over to the right.
- 08:25 I'm gonna grab the sky image.
- 08:27 I'm gonna add a layer mask, just like I did before, and
- 08:30 one more time I'm going to create a gradient from the left to the right.
- 08:33 And do that a few times until you have a nice transition to the image,
- 08:37 just like this.
- 08:38 And you do want a nice gradual transition.
- 08:40 You don't want anything too sharp because then it's gonna look a little bit
- 08:43 unrealistic.
- 08:44 And if you do feel that the transition is a little bit too sharp,
- 08:47 you can always Undo a few times and then try it again.
- 08:49 So I'm gonna do this again from the left-hand side over to the right.
- 08:52 And because we have a nice overlap over here,
- 08:55 this does give you a lot of room to work with.
- 08:57 So I can just keep doing this until the transition is nice and
- 09:00 gradual, just like this.
- 09:01 And you can also see a little bit of the clouds seeping over,
- 09:03 which is exactly what we want.
- 09:05 So now that this one's done, I'm gonna pan over to the left, I'm gonna
- 09:08 grab this image here, our next one, add a layer mask, and do the exact same thing.
- 09:13 So I'm gonna create a nice gradual.
- 09:15 Now, you are seeing right here,
- 09:16 there's a little bit of transparency cuz the overlap ends.
- 09:19 So I'm gonna Undo that and try it one more time, and
- 09:23 that should give us a much nicer looking transition just like this.
- 09:26 And finally, we're gonna go back to this image here,
- 09:29 the top one, add a layer mask, and do the exact same thing just like this.
- 09:34 And do it a few times so you get a nice, gradual transition.
- 09:37 There we go.
- 09:38 So now zooming back out, we have our blue sky going to a sunset,
- 09:42 going to a nighttime shot, a sunrise, and then back to our blue sky.
- 09:47 And of course, depending on how much overlap you have, and
- 09:50 how large your images are, you can really create some nice, seamless transitions.
- 09:54 Now, when you're viewing your panorama from this far out,
- 09:57 when you're zoomed out this far, it's going to look sharper than it actually is.
- 10:00 If I do go ahead and zoom back in,
- 10:02 you'll notice that the transition isn't as sharp as it looked when you're zoomed out.
- 10:06 And when we eventually take this image and
- 10:07 put it into our time-lapse animation, it should look nice and smooth.
- 10:11 So that'll do it for this video.
- 10:13 A very simple technique on how you can blend one image with
- 10:16 another using layer masks and the Gradient tool.
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