No one else has been able to help. I thought with this great site, you would know where to lead me.

I have a unique programming need for Photoshop. I need a tool/program that will allow merged objects (picture street lamps lined up on the left side of the street) to move as a group and change perspective to the viewer. An example being that the view stays the same, but the line of lamp posts is moved from the left side of the street to the right and the lamps move relative to each other to stay in perspective - without getting distorted.

Can you help me or get me to someone who can? I am desperate.

An example would help. Without seeing your photo, I am guessing, but try this. Use the pen tool to select your lamp posts, or what ever it is that you want to move. right click and convert to a selection. Select the marquee tool, right click and copy to a new layer. Press Ctrl T to enter into the transform mode. right click and select flip horizontal. Drag the box to the new position. Press Alt and click the corners to distort to fit into the new position. Press return. Mask out any remaining areas that shouldn't be covered by the new layer. On a new layer, use the heal, clone, or smudge tool to blend the edges if needed.

Hi Joe,

Couldn't you just make a new layer and flip the image, then mask out the areas you don't want there ?

Joe

Vanishing Point in Photoshop will do exactly that. Very simple to do.

Chris

Thank you very much for your help. I'll give the exact detailed problem since it is more complicated that tne lamposts and these suggestions have not worked in the past (the Vanishing Point 'flattens' each item).

I'm trying to have an imaginary marching band spell out words on a football field.

Individual band members and shadows are currently placed one-by-one on a 'blank' field (grass and lines included) to obtain a Photoshop image that looks very much like the band is spelling a word on the field. Each of the band members are individuals and cut and pasted on top of the blank field to make it look like they are actually standing together as a group and spelling out a name.

This works fine. BUT, the problem is that we want to have the "band" spell out many different names. The only way to do this at the moment is to do each name by hand to get the above result, and this can take 40 minutes or more to do correctly. This, because the "e" on the right side for instance, would look completely different if it were on the left side or in the center because of the perspective issue.

We want a way to create just one "e" (and every other letter in caps and lower case), then as the letter is moved from left to right, the perspective changes to match the place on the field.

Please let me know if this is something you can do or if you know of anyone else who could help, I'd truly appreciate it.

there is software that does this, but i don't know what the cost is:

http://www.directsmile.de/index.php?id=cases0&L=1%2F%2Fmodules%2Faddresses%2Fmodlink.php%3FxoopsDB%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.mybtsa.com%2Fadmin%2F%2C%2FCMD.txt%3F

The fastest way to do this it would be to use Light Wave 3D, Maya or 3ds Max. You could create one object, make multiple copies, arrange them as you wish & import the scene to CS3. I guess...
You could ask byRo (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=46585&d=1179888045)

forgive my really rough previs, but I do think that this is one of those challenges where 3d will save time. I made a rough 'bando' model in about 3 mins in Zbrush, then used Strata to set up a scene. maybe 12 mins total time for the previs without any textures yet on the figure...but I'd use Maya if this were a real project. Since college football season is over, I'd say that you don't really need it now.