Locked lesson.
About this lesson
In combination with part 1 of this tutorial and a flower with the background removed. Learn how to set key frames for movement and color adjustments.
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 2
Animate a panorama with the sky changing in the background
When to use
In combination with part 1 of this tutorial and a flower with the background removed. Learn how to set key frames for movement and color adjustments.
Instructions
Open the panorama created in time lapse part 1
- Select all the layers and convert to a smart object.
Combine with the sunflower (with the background removed)
- Drag the panorama under the flower in the layers panel.
- With the move tool position the panorama with the left side visible in the image.
Animate the sky changing
- Menu/Window/Timeline.
- Press Create Video Timeline button, Select ‘Create Video Timeline’.
- Make sure that both layers start at 0 frames and end at 10 seconds.
- In timeline expand the panorama layer: click on the ‘Transform’ Stopwatch icon.
- Go to 10 seconds.
- Hold down the shift key and drag the sky all the way to the right.
- Check movement animation and go back to frame 0.
Adjust the flower to match the sky changing
- Go to flower layer.
- Add adjustment layer: Brightness and contrast.
- Clip it to the flower layer.
- Add adjustment layer: Levels.
- Clip it to the flower layer.
- Add adjustment layer: Vibrancy.
- Clip it to the flower layer.
- Set all the adjustment layers to suit the darkest part of the changing background (the night sky).
Animate the flower adjustment layers
- In the timeline window you should see the individual adjustment layers.
- Open them all up so you can see the opacity stopwatch.
- Go to a point just before the night image comes in.
- Press the opacity stop watch and set it to 0%.
- Go to the point where its night and set the opacity to 100%.
- Go to the point where its day again and set the opacity back to 0%.
- Repeat this process with all the adjustment Layers.
- Check animation.
Export as video
- Press the arrow at the bottom of the timeline or Menu/File/Export/Render Video.
- Set name and render location.
- In dialogue box set to H.264.
- Change size if desired.
- Press Render.
- 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.
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