How to use vanishing point to mocking up designs in Photoshop

Hi there, I want to put this design on this wall. We're going to use an underutilized tool in Photoshop, called Vanishing Point; look at that. Moves around the walls, Perspective is all pretty awesome. It's a little bit jumpy, but you can't beat it for Perspective Matching. Look at that. Let's learn how to do that now in Photoshop. 

To get started we're going to open up two files, from your '10 Retouching' folder, there's 'Vanishing Point 1' and '2'. The first one is a JPEG, and it's going to open without any hassle. Because the second one is an AI file, Adobe Illustrator, it's going to come up with this little Import PDF box. Now in this case, mine's defaulting to 1164, I think that's the original size. This is something you might have to do it just depending on the image you're using. So try it first, whatever size it comes. Then you might have to resize it, because if it's too big or too small, it's not going to look right. Don't worry about it for now, I've made sure it works perfect. I'm going to click 'OK'. It's just a graphic that we-- I think we did this in the Illustrator Advanced course. If you're keen on Illustrator and 3D blobby text, you can go check out that course. 

So for this to work we need to be on 'Vanishing Point 2'. Let's go to 'Select All', then just go to 'Edit', 'Copy'. We just got it on our clipboard, we don't need this anymore. Back to 'Vanishing Point 1', let's go to 'Filter', and let's go to 'Vanishing Point'. So Vanishing Point allows us to create planes. So I'm going to draw out what I think is a square in here. Because Photoshop doesn't know we have to tell it, we have to say, I'm going to start there and kind of come down to about there. Maybe pick just kind of fuller lines of the bricks. And then come back. How far back? You can see there, I'm trying to line that, line up, I'm getting way back here, working for me. Click once, and then coming up, can you see I'm trying to line up that blue line, following the ridge of the bricks, which is surprisingly hard. I want that last one to be strapping down. I think I'm there. 

Now it's a little hard to see because it's blue, hopefully you can see it. The way to test whether it works or not, or where the Perspective is okay, it's one of these white squares in the middle. So here's the first one, there's one at the end, and somewhere in the middle. If I grab it and drag it down, you can see, it's kind of following the brickwork. If yours is wrong, say you get to the top here, I'm dragging the top middle one now, if I get to the top here, go slow, this program here, it's like a little mini program, like Liquify, except this one crashes all the time. In my experience. It's this amazing tool that's been in there forever, but nobody uses it. So I don't think it gets much developer love, anyway. 

Say that it doesn't quite line up like mine does, you can grab these corners and adjust them. What will end up happening is eventually it will say, you see, they went red. If it goes red, it says there is no chance that is a square wall. That's Photoshop going, not even close, like that's physically impossible. There's a twisted wall. If it goes yellow, goes, you're kind of close to a wall, whereas it goes blue, it says, that's a feasible flat shape that I can work with. Blue's good. Once you've got it you can either click 'OK', and go off and copy that graphic. We've already done that, right? We went 'Edit', 'Select All', 'Copy'. All we need to do now is go to 'Paste'. Weirdly we can't use the long version, or in this kind of like vanishing world, so it's going to use your shortcut. On my Mac it’s 'Command V', on a PC it's 'Ctrl V'. Here you get this one with the dots around the outside, just click it, hold it, and drag it. And hopefully, freaking out, drag it again. And it started working. I'll leave that in there in the edit, because that's just the way Vanishing Point works. It's a bit jumpy and clunky. It's really cool though. Awesome, huh? 

So I can slide this down, and I know, it's going to kind of match the Perspective. Very cool. When you get into the position, you might want to resize that. I made sure that our files we're working with in this class work fine with it. You might find this image way too big. You can get around it. It's probably easier going back into the other file and resizing it, and before you copy it, but if you want to, you can, over here there's a Transform option. See this tool here, it grabs the corners, I can hold 'Shift', and I can shrink it down and kind of get it to the size that I want. Don't be afraid to zoom out.
Sometimes the transforms end up being way off screen. So zoom right out, you might just see your transform handle way out here. When you are happy with it, let's click 'OK'. And yes, it's kind of fused in there. So we've done it, the quick, and dirty, and bad way. Why? Because it's kind of fused to the background. So I'm going to undo, and I'm going to show you some cool tricks. 

Let's go a little bit further, first, let's make a new layer. Make sure that layer is selected, there's nothing on it. Go back into 'Filter', 'Vanishing Point'. Let's drag out our wall again. My first wall, not a success, you can see, it's, no way, Jose. I'm going to drag it down to the floor, it's getting close. This one here should give us a good indication. You can see, it's not quite lining up the floor. Awesome. Drag the top one up. Not quite perfect either. So once you have jiggled it around, you can add another plane. To do that, you hold down 'Command' key on a Mac, or the 'Ctrl' key on a PC, and you're looking for any of these middle options, not the corners. So there's a middle, we'll do the floor next. 

So hold down the 'Command' key, click, hold, and drag out. You'll see, hey, cool, huh? The floor as well. We'll do this back kind of wall as well, so I'm going to click on this. You got to kind of click on them to get them to activate, so just click on them. I'm using this tool up here, it defaults to that tool. So I want this back plane, see this little white handle here? Hold on that 'Command' key again, or 'Ctrl' key on a PC, and drag it out. And you can see, this one here just didn't quite work. So it's just not matching the angle. And it's not that this isn't a square wall, it might not be, but it probably is, it's probably just the angle of the lens. We're just really close, and the lens is doing some weird stuff to it. So we can swing these little planes. 

What I remember, these are obviously good for doing walls, but really good for like book covers. Say you're doing an e-book, you can do the front cover and the spine. And you can dump your mockup on to it and it kind of folds itself around, but let's swing this guy here. So it's a the same thing, you grab the middle handle, and just hold down the other key, which is, on a Mac, 'Option', on a PC it is 'Alt', and just click, hold, and drag it, and go slow. Go very, very slow, you can see it's a bit weird. Go super slow, if you find like it's moving all over the place, yes, it does. So I'm swinging it, you can see left and right, kind of swings it like a door.

 
Now I'm trying to get my wall to line up the bricks. So it's actually going to have to swing around quite a bit. It's really finicky. I'm a pro, I've done this loads, but I'm still finding it quite tough here. So I've swung it round close to my bricks, it's being pretty good. So holding nothing down now, just grab that edge, that stretches it out. And it goes off into the distance. If it needs a bit more swinging, hold down the 'Option' key on a Mac, 'Alt' key on a PC. And go mad. You can do this one. This is probably just this finicky. Little trick is, just click in there, and use your up and down arrows to get it close. I'm happy with that. So now when we paste, just like before, I've copied it already before we come in here, you can go back out, you can click 'OK', go and copy it, 'Select All', 'Copy'. Resize it if it needs to be, come back in here, go to 'Select', 'Filter', 'Vanishing Point', and our blue lines are back. Go 'Paste'. Then you can click, hold, and drag. 

The cool thing about it now is, once it stops freaking out, here we go. It will go, hopefully around the wall. Awesome, huh? Don't worry about the pixelization, it will go. Once we hit 'Return', it's just kind of trying to do its thing. Super cool. Love it. So I am going to go to here. I'm going to put this along and transform it. I'm not going to transform it, I'm happy with it, click 'OK'. The big trick there was, because we used a separate layer, you can see now it's on its own layer. And that is the Vanishing Point. 

Before we go, I'm going to show you how I would, in this case mock it up a little bit better. Nothing to do with Vanishing Point anymore, just tips and tricks. So what I'd first do is, with this layer selected I'd work on my Blending Modes. Who remembers the shortcut for Blending Modes? Yep, it's-- make sure you're in 'Move Tool', otherwise it doesn't work. Hold down 'Shift', tap the '+' key on your keyboard. So I'd work my way through here, and just see if it is anything that worked for me, like I'll be like, I've already practiced, and I know there's nothing. So what I did was I left it at Normal, and what you can do is-- I want to load this as a selection. 

There's a trick, I can hold 'Command' and click the 'Thumbnail'. It just loads everything on that layer as a selection. If you're on a PC, it's 'Ctrl', and just click the 'Thumbnail'. I'm going to turn off that layer, because what I want to do is, on my Background Layer, I want to copy and paste, because what I did was is, I just want a chunk of this. And what I wanted is all this pointing in here. The goop that goes between the bricks. I don't know if that's called pointing, but the cement that goes between them, they're white, I want them to be actually black. So I just inverted it. How do you invert stuff? It's under here, I know it's 'Ctrl I', 'Adjustments', 'Invert', there it is there. So I've inverted it just so that that's black. I don't need it to be blue, so I'm going to hit 'Command-Shift-U', which makes it black and white, that's probably in here too. 'Command-Shift-U', there it is there, 'Desaturate'. 

Why? I'm just looking for shadows, right? I just want the lights and the darkness to apply to this thing here, which is just way too strong, like it's crystal clear, it's perfect. I don't want that, so what I'm going to do, is turn them all back on, I'm going to have this guy above him, and then I'm going to find a Blending Mode for this to blend into the color, which has been on top of the wall. And it's not black. Looks kind of cool, 'Multiply'. Depends on what you were looking for. If you were presenting this to a client as a mockup, you might just leave it full color, like look how awesome it's going to be, but if you're looking for faking it, that one's kind of cool, Hard Light. Linear Light. Luminosity, I think I'm happy with the luminosity. In Luminosity, I'm going to lower the opacity of luminosity. Just so that it's there without destroying it too much. And that's the way I went about it. 

What you might do as well is that, you'll find that this thing here has a good bit of grain in it, whereas my version here doesn't, it's like perfect because it's vector. So with that layer selected, we might add a bit of fake noise. Make sure it is a Smart Object so we can turn it off later on. 'Filter', 'Noise', 'Add Noise'. I'm just going to-- where is he? Decide how much of this I want. A bit of noise. I probably want-- I'm just guessing. But adding a bit of noise to try and match, maybe the ISO or the kind of-- bit of the background can help. 

Another thing that can help is adding a corresponding noise to the background. It's kind of destroying the background just to blend it in, but that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for it to look realistic. So 'Smart Object', I'm going to select it. I'm going to go back into my Noise, I'm going to use this one here, because it should apply the exact same noise that I did last time. Click 'OK'. And it's just so that they kind of match a bit more. Destroying the background, I know, but I think there's more consistency across that. And that is mocking up our design, using the hidden treasure, that is Vanishing Point. Let's get into the next video.