The vanishing point filter is a less known tool, but I find it to be a very useful one in some cases. You might have been in a situation where you wanted to add something to a photo, maybe put a picture or a painting on a wall, but your skill level wasn't quite there yet. Doing it manually is not the easiest thing, especially for beginners and intermediate Photoshop users.
Enter the vanishing point filter that's here to do it for you. Now to understand how it works, let's take a simple example of a photo of a room. Let's say it has a white wall that could use a framed picture or a painting. The way to understand how this filter works is by first understanding perspective. In a two dimensional space like a photograph, lines that we otherwise know are parallel in real life, converge at some point. That's what creates perspective and it's the way that we look at the world. In order to place an object on a wall and make it look natural, we have to follow these rules.
The vanishing point filter does need you to tell it what to do, and unlike other tools, such as the content aware tool, it doesn't do it all completely by itself. You might not get it right the very first time, but with a little bit of practice, you'll be able to decorate walls in Photoshop without anyone knowing they weren't the paintings weren't there in the first place.
Here's a video tutorial from Phlearn’s Aaron Nace, who explains exactly how to use this useful filter.
Learn more useful Photoshop skills from these recommended books:
- Mastering Photoshop Layers: A Photographer's Guide
- Photoshop Masking & Compositing
- The Adobe Photoshop CC Book for Digital Photographers