Posted by Mike Thirkell on April 10, 2011 at 6:17 PM
Thank you for all the comments and suggestions. I really appreciate all the input and tips on how to improve my photos. Like I said earlier I am new to bird photography and I want to learn as much as I can. With that said, here comes my "dumb" question. I understand how to create a canvas around a photo to make a frame, but I'm not sure how to add it, lets say in front of a bird shot to give more room for the bird to fly into. Are we talking about adding the background in front of the bird?
There are a couple of ways to add canvas. For example, use the add canvas dialog or you can select the entire image with the crop tool and then pull the edge of the crop line over to create the additional blank canvas. It's essentially the same way you would do it for a frame, except that you don't put a frame there, you put picture there. There are a lot of different ways to do that, too. The conditions will affect the method to use. Lets say you have 500 pixels between the tip of the bird's bill and the edge of the frame and you want to increase that to about 1000 pixels for the bird to fly into. The easiest way is to use the rectangular selection tool and select a strip from the original edge of the frame almost to the top of the bill. Then using Transform, drag the edge of the selection to to new edge of the canvas. If the background is clear sky, or water, or blurry background, this method works great.
If the area of the image the bird is flying into is detailed, then it might take take some copying and blending, which could take a bit of work to make it look right.
There are a lot of ways to accomplish this. This is how I would approach it, but I'm no PS guru.
If you're using Photoshop CS4 or CS5, there's a new way of adding canvas and stretching additional image onto it.
It's called Content Aware Scaling, and here's how this minor miracle works:
Using your example, let's add an inch to the right side of the image to give more room for the bird to fly.
Image->Canvas Size. With the Relative box checked, choose 'inches' and type in 1 in the Width window.
Leave the Height window at 0. In the square box with arrows, click on the middle left box and click 'OK'.
You should have a white area on the right side of the image.
Select->All.
Edit->Content Aware Scale.
Click on the anchor point on the middle right hand side of the selection and drag to the right 'til you fill the white canvas.
This should allow you to fill in the canvas without affecting/distorting the bird's dimensions (hence, the 'minor miracle' note above) as it may using the Transform technique mentioned by Buck..
Click on the Check mark near the top of your screen, then Select->Deselect and voila! You're good to go.
Discussion
4 repliesIf the area of the image the bird is flying into is detailed, then it might take take some copying and blending, which could take a bit of work to make it look right.
There are a lot of ways to accomplish this. This is how I would approach it, but I'm no PS guru.
It's called Content Aware Scaling, and here's how this minor miracle works:
Using your example, let's add an inch to the right side of the image to give more room for the bird to fly.
Image->Canvas Size. With the Relative box checked, choose 'inches' and type in 1 in the Width window.
Leave the Height window at 0. In the square box with arrows, click on the middle left box and click 'OK'.
You should have a white area on the right side of the image.
Select->All.
Edit->Content Aware Scale.
Click on the anchor point on the middle right hand side of the selection and drag to the right 'til you fill the white canvas.
This should allow you to fill in the canvas without affecting/distorting the bird's dimensions (hence, the 'minor miracle' note above) as it may using the Transform technique mentioned by Buck..
Click on the Check mark near the top of your screen, then Select->Deselect and voila! You're good to go.