extending a photo w/out distortion

[sgerrald]

I have a photo that is more landscape in shape than portrait that I need to put on the front of a 8 1/2 x 11 brochure with a bleed. Can anyone tell me how to extend the top and bottom details of the photo to fill the gaps. I can't extend the photo without distorting it. I'm fairly new to photoshop, so pardom me if this is a basic question. Thanks!

[ljameso1]

That would involve some very time consuming work with the clone tool. I have another idea to offer. If there are no important details close to the side edges try pasting onto a new blank file of the size for the brochure front. Control+T to get it to fit horizontally. Then with the rectangular marque tool draw a rectangle that abuts the top and bottom edge and encompasses a proportional amount on the sides. Invert the selection and fill it with a color or pattern to create a border. Not sure what you mean by bleed so don't know if will work for you.

[cats4jan]

Sometimes you can get away with making two layers - and then moving the top layer down - in essense - having a duplicate of the top - a little erasing with a soft brush could blend the two.

As is always suggested here - if you could post the photo at pixentral, the real experts here will surely have great ideas for you.

[sgerrald]

Yes, I would like to post the photo. I've only done that once. Could you remind me of the steps to do that on pixentral. Thanks!

[christellf]

Check here. This gives the steps to post with pixentral:
http://www.elementsvillage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30761
Christell

[sgerrald]

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1CuD4yE5nOjBfBkYFNYZrnVtrzvbg_thumb.gif (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1CuD4yE5nOjBfBkYFNYZrnVtrzvbg)

The above link is to the photo I was talking about. Can anyone offer any advice? I need to place this photo on the front of an 8 1/2 x 11 trifold brochure - so it needs to fit roughly into a 3.66 x 8 1/2 frame. I can do a little cropping of the outside edges, but not much. Thanks!

[cats4jan]

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p103/cats4jan/bowl.jpg

[sgerrald]

WOW! Thanks a million! Can you tell me how you did this?

[cats4jan]

Can you tell me how you did this

I was afraid you'd ask that. :eek:

The way I did this is too bizarre to explain - I don't do it the way I'm supposed to and I can't really explain how I did it.

It's a series of duplicating the photo - shifting the bottom layer around - merging the layers. Making another duplicate - erasing weird things that appeared on the top layer - shifting the bottom layer to fill the holes I created by erasing. Then merging the two layers and duplicating it again - and doing the shifting and erasing again.

I do this over and over again until I get the results I need.

The quality of the photo will suffer from all this duplicating and erasing, but when I do this, quality is never that much of an issue, so I don't mind.

I know - this explanation is "clear as mud" - sorry.

Try one thing to extend the bowling alley

Open your photo
Duplicate your photo
Now you have two layers
Select the bottom layer - layer one
hit control t - (transform)
now shift the bottom layer down - you will see the bowling alley emerge - keep shifting the bottom layer down until you can no longer make the two views of the bowling alley (the top layer view and the bottom layer view) meet.

(As you can see from my try - the gutter doesn't actually meet very well - but I did a quicky job on it - just to see if it could be done)

Expand the bottom layer by pulling on the sides - and try and cinnect the lines in the alley - shift it in all directions until it looks OK.

Merge the two layers.

That's how I did the top, too. But when I did the top, I had two sets of lights in the background - that's where the erasing comes in.

But maybe extending the alley and just a little of the top will make the photo usable for your project.

[sgerrald]

Whew! Okay, well I'll sure give all that a try. Thanks so much for your help! I'll let you know how it turns out. :D

[sgerrald]

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1ycYAjcoFbbVJtHG4HBUh9WLE96pi1_thumb.gif (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1ycYAjcoFbbVJtHG4HBUh9WLE96pi1)

Here's my extended pic. Thanks so much for the tips - it worked!

I have another problem - can someone help? I have a couple other photos that I'm placing into the brochure and they are not transparent (they have a white box around them). I have gone through the quick selection tool to select the pic only but I still have a box. I also have a grey box behind the white box. Can anyone offer any suggestions?

[ljameso1]

You could try copying it onto a new document that is transparant and use the magic wand tool to select and delete the white and gray boxes. Just don't flatten or save as a jpeg(use psd) or you'll get another white box around.