Isaac Karth, a multi-talented 3D and motion graphic artist, prepared this Toolfarm exclusive tutorial. He demonstrates how to get that "Ken Burns"-style effect by cutting a part an image and staggering the in 3D space. Check out Isaac's website at IsaacKarth.com.

You will need:

• Photoshop CS2
• After Effects 6.5 (any version of Photoshop with the clone tool and any version of After Effects with 3D layers should suffice)

Instructions

The Original Photograph

Get a photo

The first step is to have a photo to work from. Unfortunately, not every photo will work for this effect. The photo needs to have objects in the fore, mid, and background planes. Combining multiple photos can also work, but only if they can be made to match.

For this example, I will be using a photograph I took of a path on a wooded hilltop. It has a distinct foreground, mid-ground, and background, with plenty of opportunities for overlap. The downside of this particular shot is that the configuration of the foreground trees limits the degree to which we can move the camera from side to side. An image with more space around the sides would allow for more extreme camera moves.

The most important thing about this picture, however, is its size: at 5 mega pixels, the image is 2560 pixels wide and 1920 pixels high -- more than three and a half times NTSC resolution. This will allow us to zoom in further than otherwise possible.

Break it into layers

The photo needs to be broken into layers. This can be done in After Effects, with multiple copies of the photo, but on a complex image it can be easier to edit the layers in Photoshop or another image editing program.

The photo should be divided into foreground, mid-ground, and background. For this particular image, the foreground consists of four trees -- two on the left and two on the right. The mid-ground is the rest of the hilltop, and the background consists of the distant trees in the valley below.

The four trees in the foreground

Erase The Background

Duplicate the background layer. The easiest way to do this is to click on the background layer in the Layers palette and drag it to 'Create a new layer' button at the bottom of the palate. This will give you a new, unlocked layer called 'Background copy'.

Copying the background layer

Turn the other layers off by clicking on the eye. This will make the transparency of the layer you're working on more obvious.

Now, erase everything on the layer except for the tree in the foreground. You can use any method to do this.

The selection tools can be found here

Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool or the Lasso Tool to select the large area on one side of the tree. Use Edit>Clear (or press Delete) to erase the selection. Repeat for the other side of the tree.

Erasing unwanted background

Zoom in on the remaining tree, and use the eraser tool to remove the remaining background, leaving just the tree behind. A slightly soft eraser will mimic the slight blending at the edge of the trunk, where the background bleeds through.

The second tree follows the same procedure as the first: copy the Background layer, erase the space around the tree.

If the trees had fine branches, transparent areas, or other problem areas, then additional steps will be necessary, but these particular trees are fairly straight and have nothing in front of them.

tree_right_foreground_1

tree_right_foreground_2

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