Deke’s Techniques 317: Using the Perspective Crop Tool

317 Using the Perspective Crop tool

 "Hail to the Chief, He’s the Chief We All Say Hail To… "    —-Dave

This week’s free Deke’s Techniques episode comes to you, in part, courtesy of Deke’s double epic win in the 1972 Parker Brothers board game, Landslide. It also features the Perspective Crop tool in Photoshop CC.

The result is that you go from Deke’s celebratory, but off-to-the-side, capture of the game results to a virtually overhead perspective on the competition results (in which you will see Deke got Texas and Pennsylvania, which in 1974 would have gone a long way to your electoral college victory): 

Before and after using the Perspective Crop tool

The Perspective Crop tool allows you to rearrange the perspective while you’re editing away on all parts of the composition. It’s a great two-for-one operation that allows you to recompose and reposition at the same time. There’s a reason Deke keeps getting reelected around here. (Yeah, the ruthless way he stole California from me!)

If you’re a member of lynda.com, you can see an exclusive follow-up movie this week in which Deke demonstrates how to reduce the effects of camera shake in this same image.

If you’re not a member of lynda.com, but would like to check it out, you can go to lynda.com/deke and get a free week’s trial. 

Next entry:Deke’s Techniques 319: Reducing Glare in a Photograph

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  • Non destructive Perspective Crop equivalent

    It seems odd that Perspective Crop remains destructive in CC since you can do this non-destructively (though currently with a LOT more work!) by using Perspective Warp on a smart object and then cropping that result. While I don’t personally need it, perhaps this would be useful to others for Deke to cover in some future video—how to do the equivalent of a Perspective Crop with the ability to change it (as well as the underlying RAW file) at any time. It’s complicated, but IMHO that’s what Deke excels at—explaining complex procedures in a way that makes them look almost easy. :-)

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