Skip to main content

Isolating The Tripod Area

Lesson 5 from: Editing 360 Degree Photos in Photoshop & After Effects

Chris Converse

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

5. Isolating The Tripod Area

To begin, we’ll launch After Effects. First, we’ll set up our workspace interface to best suit our needs for editing this panoramic image. We’ll be using a small screen and rearrange our panels. Now let’s drag our original JPEG into our Project panel. Once the image is there, drag it into the Composition panel. Then open VR Cop Editor and let’s select the options we’ll need for our composition. Then we’ll create our files and save them.

Lesson Info

Isolating The Tripod Area

to begin our project. Let's launch after Effects. And let's make sure that we can see all of the panels that we talked about earlier. So once you've launched After Effects, let's go up to the window menu. Let's come down to workspace and let's choose small screen that's going to give us our composition panel here in the centre, our project panel over on the left, our timeline panel down at the bottom and over on the right hand side. We'll see a few additional panels. Let's come over here and let's close the libraries panel. Let's come over here and close preview and will also close info. We want to make sure that we have the Effects and presets open and the last panel that we're going to need is the effect controls. So back to the window menu let's come down and activate effect controls. Now in this workspace, the effect controls, It's going to be next to the project panel. Supply click project panel. We'll see all of the contents of the project panel and effect controls will show with...

all of the controls for any effect that we apply to our compositions. And so now let's make sure our project panel is showing. Let's go to the file menu. Come down to import choose file and from the exercise files. Let's go into folder A and let's locate like more retreat underscore original dot jpeg. Then click open. That's going to link this Jpeg file into the project panel metacritic composition. Let's click and hold on this file. Let's drag and drop it over into the composition panel. This will automatically create a composition exactly the size of the Jpeg, which we can see here is 5376 by pixels in the center here. I'm just gonna zoom out a little bit. And so now that we've created a new composition, we can see the composition showing up here in the project panel and we can also see R J peg showing up as a new layer in the timeline panel. And now what we're going to need to do is isolate the table and the tripod which is showing up down here in the bottom of the unwrapped spherical panorama and isolate these so that none of those pixels touch the edges. And to do this, we're going to need to activate the VR competitor. So let's go to the Window menu and choose VR comp editor down at the bottom. Now, if you get a message from After Effects stating that you need to enable scripts to write files and access to network, then open the general preferences section and after Effects located under the edit menu in Windows or the After Effects application menu on the mag. Then check the box next to the text that reads, allow scripts to write files and access network. Then click OK. And then try again to open the VR comp Editor from the Window menu and once the VR camp editor loads. I'll resize mine a little bit and then we'll click attitude. The edit for the composition. We're going to choose like more retreat For the comp with let's come in here and change this to 2200 pixels. This will increase the size of the editing come so that we can more easily isolate the tripod and then come down and click add to the edit. So once that's applied, let's close to be our competitor over in the project panel. You see we got two folders, one with Blakemore retreat, original VR to output and another one for the solids. Inside of here. We'll see a series of additional compositions that have been created. We can close up all of these And down in the timeline panel two of these cops are opened the VR to edit one and the br to output. The edit composition is where we're going to be able to add new artwork and the output comp which will activate here will show us the results of all of the edits being distorted back into the unwrapped sphere. Now this tool can be rather taxing on a Gpu or the graphics processing unit. If you see this dialog box here, we'll come down and choose, ignore, letting us know that we don't have enough RAM in our Gpu. Let's come in here, change the resolution from full down to half. Then if we click back to edit and then click back to the output, will now see the Unwrapped sphere. Now if you see some messages inside of here in red telling you that you need to activate the Gpu acceleration, Go up to the file menu, come down to project settings and in the video rendering effects, make sure that you have the mercury gpu acceleration turned on and now to isolate the tripod. Let's go back to the edit composition. I'll zoom up in here a little bit. You'll notice in this Composition there is a VR camera showing up here. Let's go up to the top toolbar. Let's find the camera toll. If we click and hold on this, there are a series of different camera options. We're gonna leave the top selection here, unified camera tool, then move your cursor inside of the composition. Click and drag and you can look around inside the spherical panorama. So what we want to do is scroll up here so that we can see the tripod and the table completely isolated inside of the areas. And what you mean by that is the tripod in the shadow. Don't touch the edges of the composition here. And once we have this position similar to this, were ready to save this out to Photoshop. Now, if your graphics processing unit allows you to see this view in full resolution, you can come up to the composition menu, come down to save frame as and choose Photoshop layers. Then go into the exercise files, go into retouching and we're gonna name this lake More underscore retreat, underscore tripod underscore export and then we'll choose safe. And now, however, if your Gpu only allows you to see the resolution at half, what you're going to need to do is come up to the composition menu, Come down to save frame as and choose file. This is going to open up after effects is render queue, which we can see down here next to output module. Let's click on the name Photoshop Let's come in here and check resize. We want to make sure that we saved the full resolution, which is by 12 38. Let's click OK. For the output. Let's click on the file name. I'll go to exercise files, we'll come out to retouching and I'm going to come in here and overwrite the file we created earlier. So come down here and it's safe choose replace and then we'll come down here and click render. Now, the only difference in the resulting Photoshop file is that if your Gpu supports full resolution, previews the layers panel in your Photoshop composition will have some layer groups inside of it. If you had to use the render queue, which I've done here will have a single layered Photoshop file. Now, this won't have any effect on the final project. In both cases, we got a full resolution export from after effects and we'll still be able to do all of our retouching in Photoshop. And now, before we continue on to Photoshop to edit out the tripod, let's save our after effects project. So let's go up to the file menu. Let's come down and choose save. Let's go into the exercise files. Let's go into retouching and let's name this lake More underscore retreat underscore modified dot a e p which stands for after effects project and then choose save. And now the last comment I want to make is inside of the edit one composition. Make sure that you don't change the camera position after we make our edits in Photoshop we're gonna bring that Photoshop file back into this composition and cover up the tripod

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Practice Files

Ratings and Reviews

Rex Maximilian
 

In Lesson 8 I would highly recommend grouping the layers into a folder named "Components," then duplicate it and turn the duplicate into a smart layer. Then rename the smart layer "Composite," or something like that. Then turn off the group of layers leaving only the composite layer displayed. This way the files remains editable for future lawn/image cleaning. The way the instructor did it would delete all of the layers for potential future editing.

Miguel Marnoto
 

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES