Time Lapse Part 2

Quick reference

• 00:04 We're gonna take this panorama.
• 00:05 We're gonna put it behind the sunflower.
• 00:07 And we're gonna create a time lapse animation.
• 00:10 And at the same time, make sure that the sunflower in the foreground,
• 00:14 matches as best as possible the sky in the background.
• 00:18 So to start, we're gonna go back to this document here and
• 00:20 we're gonna grab this panorama and bring it over to the original document.
• 00:24 Now in my Layers panel I have a bunch of different layers.
• 00:27 I'm gonna simply hold down my Shift key, select the last layer,
• 00:30 right click on either of them, and then convert them to a smart object.
• 00:34 That'll give me one single layer that I can drag to the other document and
• 00:38 if at any time I need to edit that,
• 00:40 I can simply double-click on the smart object and make the edits as necessary.
• 00:44 So with my Move tool I'm gonna grab this panorama,
• 00:46 drag it right over to this document and place it on top of the sunflower.
• 00:51 Now obviously we don't want it on top of the sunflower.
• 00:53 So, in the Layers panel I'm gonna grab the panorama layer and
• 00:56 simply drag it right below the sunflower just like that.
• 01:00 And as I probably wanted to start at the blue sky, I'm gonna simply drag this
• 01:04 layer over to the right just like this, and position it in place.
• 01:08 Somewhere right around there.
• 01:10 Good, so we have our starting point, now to start off, we're gonna
• 01:13 ignore the adjustment layers for now, we're gonna get back to those later on.
• 01:16 We're first gonna deal with moving the panorama in
• 01:18 the background to change the skies.
• 01:21 And to do any type of animation in Photoshop, you want to
• 01:24 reveal the timeline, which can be found either at the bottom of your workspace,
• 01:28 right down here where it says timeline.
• 01:29 Or you can find it under the Window menu at the top and
• 01:32 then go right down to Timeline.
• 01:34 That will reveal, well, your timeline at the bottom of your workspace.
• 01:37 And this is where you'll be able to see all the different layers that compose
• 01:41 this animation.
• 01:41 And once you start adding adjustment layers, those will appear here as well and
• 01:45 you'll be able to animate them.
• 01:47 Now I wanna make sure that my background layer is at the beginning of my animation,
• 01:50 so I'm gonna drag it back to the beginning, and
• 01:52 I'm gonna simply pull it over to the right to extend this clip so
• 01:55 that it matches the sunflower image on top.
• 01:57 And if I scroll back to the beginning and press the Play button, it'll play back
• 02:01 the animation, but obviously right now we haven't animated anything.
• 02:04 So, let's go back to the beginning and
• 02:06 we're first gonna animate the background image.
• 02:08 Now if I go over to the left here,
• 02:09 let me actually go to my Layers panel and rename this.
• 02:12 I'm going to rename this Sky and press Return.
• 02:16 That way I can tell which layer is which in the animation timeline.
• 02:19 And if I expand the Sky layer,
• 02:21 I'll be able to see all the different things that I'm able to animate.
• 02:24 If I scroll down here, I can animate the transformation, opacity or style.
• 02:28 And in this case we're gonna be animating the transformation which will allow us
• 02:31 to move it from point a to point b.
• 02:34 So the first thing we need to do, we need to make our first key frame.
• 02:37 And we can do that by clicking on the stopwatch icon to the left of
• 02:40 where it says Transform and that will create our first key frame right here.
• 02:44 Now we can go to the end of our animation.
• 02:46 It could be over here.
• 02:47 Or it can be all the way at the end, it's completely up to you.
• 02:49 And it can be changed later on.
• 02:50 So don't worry too much about where your ending point is.
• 02:53 And when you get to that ending point, you need to move your sky to the new location.
• 02:58 I'm gonna hold down my Shift key and
• 02:59 simply drag the sky across my document until I see the blue sky one more time.
• 03:05 Almost there, and there we go.
• 03:09 And now if we press the Spacebar on our keyboard,
• 03:11 it's gonna play back our very choppy animation.
• 03:14 As with any animation in Photoshop, the first time you play something back,
• 03:17 it's going to be very slow and
• 03:19 very choppy cuz Photoshop is rendering the whole entire animation frame by frame.
• 03:24 But if I were to press the Spacebar to stop it, go back to the beginning and
• 03:27 then play the part that's been rendered, it's gonna look a lot smoother.
• 03:31 So don't worry too much if your animation seems choppy at first,
• 03:34 because it'll sort itself out over time and when you export it.
• 03:37 So now that the sky has been animated, obviously when we get to a part like
• 03:41 this where the sky is dark, we don't want the flower to look as it does right now.
• 03:45 We want it to be a little bit darker.
• 03:47 And what we're able to do is actually animate adjustment layers.
• 03:50 So let me scroll back to the beginning and in my Layers panel, I'm gonna click on
• 03:54 the Sunflower layer and on top of this I'm gonna add an adjustment layer.
• 03:57 Let's start with a brightness and contrast adjustment layer.
• 04:00 And at this point we
• 04:01 just wanna figure out what the final result is going to look like.
• 04:04 So I'm gonna drop the brightness until the sunflower is looking a little bit darker.
• 04:07 I'm gonna drop the contrast as well.
• 04:08 And you're probably noticing that it's also effecting the background.
• 04:12 You definitely don't want that.
• 04:13 So I'm gonna right-click on the Brightness and Contrast adjustment layer.
• 04:16 And create a clipping mask which will basically put it inside the flower layer.
• 04:20 And that's looking a little bit better but
• 04:21 still not looking like it's part of a night time shot.
• 04:24 I'm gonna add one more adjustment layer and it's gonna be Levels.
• 04:27 And for this adjustment, I'm gonna grab this slider right here,
• 04:29 drag it to the left, which will really darken up the image.
• 04:33 And again I wanna make sure to clip it to the previous layer.
• 04:35 I can click on this icon right here, so that it's only effecting
• 04:38 the sunflower layer and it's not effecting the background.
• 04:41 And if I feel it's necessary, I can also adjust the level sliders as needed,
• 04:45 just like this.
• 04:46 So it's looking a little bit darker.
• 04:47 Let's go ahead and
• 04:48 see what it's gonna look like with the night sky in the background.
• 04:50 So I'm gonna grab my playhead and drag it to the right.
• 04:53 And leave it right around there so we can see what it looks like with the night sky.
• 04:56 Now at first glance, the Brightness and
• 04:58 Contrast adjustment layer is a little bit too overdone.
• 05:01 So I'm gonna select that adjustment layer.
• 05:03 I'm gonna turn up the brightness just a little bit.
• 05:05 That looks a little bit better.
• 05:06 And we probably want to darken it up even more.
• 05:08 So I'm gonna grab the Levels adjustment layer, drag this to the left a little bit.
• 05:13 I wanna add one more adjustment layer,
• 05:14 it's gonna be a vibrance, and I'm gonna simply turn down the vibrance a little bit
• 05:18 to get rid of some of the color in the photo.
• 05:20 One more time, making sure to clip it to the previous layer.
• 05:24 And that looks a little bit more realistic than it did before.
• 05:27 So at this point, I think we're ready to start animating the adjustment layer
• 05:30 layers and in the time line like I mentioned before you can see all
• 05:33 the adjustment layers that we just added.
• 05:35 We have our vibrance levels and brightness and contrast.
• 05:38 And each one can be expanded to see the different things that can be animated,
• 05:41 position, opacity and style.
• 05:44 And in this case we're gonna be animating the opacity.
• 05:47 And to start on each of these adjustment layers, I wanna set the opacity to 0%.
• 05:51 So I'm gonna select the first one, press 0 two times.
• 05:55 Select Levels, 0 two times and select Brightness and
• 05:58 Contrast and again press 0 two times.
• 06:00 And if that doesn't work, if you're on an older version of Photoshop,
• 06:03 you can simply grab the opacity slider and slide it all the way to the left.
• 06:07 So now, let's start with the vibrance adjustment layer in the timeline.
• 06:10 Let's scrub to a place where it's just about to start getting dark,
• 06:13 somewhere right around here.
• 06:14 I'm gonna add a key frame for
• 06:15 opacity and then I'm gonna scrub to a part where it's supposed to be completely dark.
• 06:19 Right about here.
• 06:20 And when I get to that point, I wanna add another key frame, but
• 06:22 this time, because I already have a key frame, I can simply press 0 on my
• 06:26 keyboard to change the opacity of that adjustment layer to 100%.
• 06:29 Then I'm gonna scrub to the right a little bit more to a part where it's not dark any
• 06:33 more and then press 0 twice to set the opacity back to 0%.
• 06:38 And that will complete the first animation of our first adjustment layer.
• 06:41 And if I play this back from this point, you're gonna see that the vibrance of
• 06:45 the flower layer is slowly starting to decrease as it becomes night and
• 06:49 then it will start to increase as it becomes day once again.
• 06:52 Now obviously like I mentioned before, it's a little bit choppy as Photoshop is
• 06:56 rendering the animation but at the end once we let everything render,
• 06:59 you're gonna see how all this comes together.
• 07:01 So now we basically wanna do the exact same thing for
• 07:03 the other two adjustment layers.
• 07:04 I'm gonna pull up the timeline so I can see what I'm working with.
• 07:07 I'm gonna scrub to the first key frame that I added for
• 07:09 the vibrance adjustment layer.
• 07:10 I'm gonna scroll down to Levels, I'm gonna add an opacity key frame,
• 07:15 which will be kept at 0%.
• 07:16 And then I'm gonna scrub to the second key frame.
• 07:19 Press 0 to make it 100%.
• 07:21 And then scroll to the third key frame and
• 07:23 press 0 twice to set that adjustment layer back to 0%.
• 07:27 Now one more time, I'm gonna scroll down to my Brightness and
• 07:30 Contrast adjustment layer and do the exact same thing.
• 07:33 I'm gonna set my first key frame right there.
• 07:35 Scrub to the second one.
• 07:37 Press 0 to set it to 100%.
• 07:39 And then scrub to the third one and then press 0 twice to set it back to 0%.
• 07:44 So now let me make my timeline a little bit smaller.
• 07:47 And I'm gonna play back the choppy animation from the beginning.
• 07:50 And you're gonna see that the sunflower, as the scene progresses into night time,
• 07:54 is slowly starting to get darker to match the night sky in the background.
• 07:59 And once it gets to this point, and starts to become day time again, the sunflower is
• 08:03 gonna start to get lighter, matching again the sky in the background.
• 08:07 So I'm gonna pause that.
• 08:08 And because that little section has been rendered already, if I go back and
• 08:12 press the Spacebar, you're gonna see a nice smooth animation, just like that.
• 08:17 And that looks pretty nice.
• 08:18 Once you do finally get around to exporting this video,
• 08:21 the whole animation is gonna be nice and smooth.
• 08:23 Now one quick thing to note.
• 08:24 If I scrub back here, you are noticing, if you look very close, there's a little bit
• 08:28 of transparency that seeped through in the sky and the background.
• 08:32 And this brings up the advantage of using smart objects in your projects.
• 08:36 If you remember at the beginning of the video,
• 08:37 I converted the panorama into a smart object.
• 08:40 Well, now I wanna go back and
• 08:41 edit the layer mask so I don't have that transparency.
• 08:44 So if I go down to my Layers panel,
• 08:46 I double-click on the Sky layer which is a smart object.
• 08:48 I'm gonna press OK.
• 08:50 Photoshop is gonna load all of those layers exactly like they were.
• 08:53 And if I zoom into that area, where the night sky is,
• 08:56 I'll definitely see a little bit of transparency.
• 08:58 So I'm gonna select that night sky layer, which is this one right here, and
• 09:02 what I can do is I can actually unlock the layer with the layer mask.
• 09:05 So I'm going to unlock it by pressing the lock icon right beside it.
• 09:08 I'm going to select the layer mask and
• 09:10 you're going to see white boxes surround it.
• 09:12 And to fix this issue,
• 09:13 I can simply drag the layer mask to the left just a little bit.
• 09:17 And I did happen to bring back a little bit of sharpness on the side.
• 09:20 So I can grab my Gradient tool, shortcut key G,
• 09:22 and simply drag out a gradient just like that to fix that problem.
• 09:26 And once I have that problem resolved, Cmd or
• 09:28 Ctrl+S on your keyboard to save the panorama and the smart object.
• 09:32 And once it's been saved, Photoshop is gonna update it on your other document.
• 09:36 And when I do go ahead and
• 09:37 close this document, you'll notice the sunflower document is fixed.
• 09:41 So if you're not using smart objects, I would definitely recommend using them.
• 09:44 I do have a few videos that I've done in the past showing the benefits of
• 09:47 smart objects.
• 09:48 But a very simple example like this shows you how easy it is to
• 09:51 fix problems which would be very difficult if you went ahead and
• 09:55 simply merged those layers when we started.
• 09:57 So at this point, I think the animation is ready to be exported.
• 10:00 Obviously, you can add more adjustment layers like photo filters to
• 10:03 make the sunflower a little bit warmer or
• 10:05 a little bit cooler based on the sky in the background.
• 10:08 But I definitely think you get the idea.
• 10:10 The adjustment layers can be added just like we did with the vibrance levels and
• 10:13 brightness and contrast adjustment layers.
• 10:15 And they can be animated the same way.
• 10:17 So at the bottom of the timeline, you can press the arrow icon,
• 10:20 which will allow you to take this video and export it to your computer.
• 10:24 And in this render window, you can go ahead and name the document.
• 10:27 I'm going to keep it as Sunflower.
• 10:28 You can select where you wanna save it.
• 10:30 I'm gonna keep it on my desktop.
• 10:31 And the format is definitely good at H.264.
• 10:34 That'll give you the highest quality video,
• 10:36 while keeping the file size nice and low.
• 10:38 And you can also adjust the size of the document if you wish.
• 10:41 I'm gonna simply reduce it down to 1,000 by 1,000.
• 10:44 I don't want it too big.
• 10:46 And then I'm gonna press Render to start the animation.
• 10:49 And depending on how large the document is and
• 10:51 how complex the animation is, this process may take a little bit of time.
• 10:55 So I'm not gonna sit here and watch the whole thing,
• 10:57 I'm gonna be right back in a second and I'm gonna show you the final animation.
• 11:01 And there you have it, the final animation has been rendered, exported and
• 11:05 playing back for you right now.
• 11:06 And you can see how well everything came together.
• 11:09 We have the sunflower in the foreground,
• 11:11 the panorama that we created in the last video in the background.
• 11:14 And we have the adjustment layers being animated so
• 11:16 that the sunflower matches the sky in the background.
• 11:19 And like I mentioned, if you want to change the color of the sunflower to make
• 11:22 it warmer or cooler, you can definitely do that using your adjustment layers.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.