IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS

Actions for Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 11 or newer

User Guide

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

CONTENTS

1. THE BASICS ................................................................................................................................................. 1

1.1. About the effects .......................................................................................................................................... 1

1.2. How the actions are organized ..................................................................................................................... 1

1.3. Installing the actions in Photoshop Elements .............................................................................................. 1

2. THE ACTIONS............................................................................................................................................... 2

2.1. The “Triangle of Cubes” actions ................................................................................................................... 2

2.2. The “Impossible Steps” actions .................................................................................................................... 6

2.3. The “Triangle Overlay” actions ..................................................................................................................... 7

2.4. The “Framed: Square” and the “Framed: Pentagon” actions. ..................................................................... 9

3. CREDITS: ................................................................................................................................................... 14

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

1 © Panos Efstathiadis | all rights reserved

1. THE BASICS

1.1. About the effects The “Impossible Photos” Photoshop actions create 6 optical illusions of your photos, using a variety of the so-called “impossible objects” (triangle, square, and pentagon shapes).

You can read more on the impossible objects here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_object

1.2. How the actions are organized The set contains 6 different actions.

• The first two actions create impossible triangles made up from 9 cubes. The first action uses the same photo on all cube facets, while the second action uses 3 different photos.

• The four “IMPOSSIBLE STEPS” actions create impossible stairs made up from cubes that show the same or different photos on their facets.

• The two “Triangle Overlay” actions will display your photos through two impossible triangle overlays.

• The last two actions create two ‘impossible’ frames: a square and a pentagon, respectively.

1.3. Installing the actions in Photoshop Elements If you don’t know how to install and use Photoshop actions, please refer to this article on PanosFX.com:

https://www.panosfx.com/installation-troubleshooting/installing-pse-actions

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

2 © Panos Efstathiadis | all rights reserved

2. THE ACTIONS

2.1. The “Triangle of Cubes” actions

The first two actions create an impossible triangle, which is made up of 9 cubes. The first action uses the same photo on all cube facets. The second action uses a different photo on each one of the 3 visible cube facets.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

3 © Panos Efstathiadis | all rights reserved

The actions begin with prompting you to enter the preferred size for the cube facet (default: 400x400 pixels):

The width of the final, “impossible” triangle will be 5 times the width you enter at this step, while its height will be 5.7 times bigger. For example, if you set the size of the cube facet to 300 x 300 pixels, the size of the final triangle will be (roughly) 1500 x 1700 pixels. If you plan to show off your optical illusions on the web, you don’t have to set the cube facet size too high.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

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Press Continue. The image size window shows up:

Change the image width (or its height) and hit OK to move on.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you maintain the image size proportions: do not uncheck the “Constrain Proportions” box.

In the next step the action asks you to place your photo(s) on the cube facets.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

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Hit Continue and then load a photo file. Place it over the square background.

To resize the photo proportionally while placing it over the background, hold down the Alt key (PC) or the option key (Mac) and drag a corner inside / outside.

When you finish, double click to confirm and move on. The action will update the photo on the facets on all 9 cubes, as well as the facet reflections.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

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2.2. The “Impossible Steps” actions Similarly to the “Triangle of Cubes”, these actions create an impossible object made up from different cubes. The object in this case is an impossible staircase.

There are 4 different effects:

• Impossible steps with 8 cubes – same photo on each facet. • Impossible steps with 8 cubes – different photos on the facets. • Impossible steps with 10 cubes – same photo on each facet. • Impossible steps with 10 cubes – different photos on the facets.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

7 © Panos Efstathiadis | all rights reserved

2.3. The “Triangle Overlay” actions

The two “Triangle Overlay” actions create an optical illusion of your photos, by displaying them through the shape an impossible triangle. The first action creates a thicker triangle, allowing you to display more pixels of the original photo. The second action creates a triangle with thinner sides:

Open a photo prior to running these actions. When you run the action you will see the shape of an impossible triangle on the upper left corner of your photo. This shape lets you define which pixels will be displayed in the final triangle.

Use your mouse to move the shape around.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

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To resize the shape proportionally, drag a corner handle inside / outside.

When you are finish, double click to move one. The action will create the impossible triangle in a few seconds.

When the action is complete, you can go to the layers panel and change the opacity of the various “Shade” and “Glow” layers, to your preference. When the action finishes the “Shade top” layer is selected.

The default opacity of these 9 layers has been set to 50%.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

9 © Panos Efstathiadis | all rights reserved

2.4. The “Framed: Square” and the “Framed: Pentagon” actions. The last two actions create 2 impossible frames. The first action creates an impossible square frame while the second action creates an impossible pentagon frame:

Select one of the two actions and hit the Play button. You don’t need to have opened a photo prior to running these actions.

The action will display a message, asking you to define the preferred size of the photo inside the frame:

Press Continue.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

10 © Panos Efstathiadis | all rights reserved

The image size window shows up:

Change the image width (or its height) and hit OK to move on.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you maintain the image size proportions: do not uncheck the “Constrain Proportions” box.

In the next step the action asks you to insert a photo:

Hit Continue and load a photo in the file browser window.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

11 © Panos Efstathiadis | all rights reserved

The background is displayed in red color. If your photo is not square, you need to resize it to cover entirely the red background:

To resize proportionally, hold down the Alt key (Mac: option) and drag a corner handle outside till the photo covers the red background:

Use the mouse or the arrow keys to nudge the photo. Double click to place the photo and move on.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

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The impossible frame will be ready in a few seconds.

The action will ask you to choose a color for the frame:

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

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Hit OK.

The Color Picker window shows up; pick a color for the frame and click on OK to apply:

TIP: You can edit the frame color when the action finishes, by double clicking the “color” layer thumbnail.

The very same steps apply to the “FRAMED: PENTAGON” action.

IMPOSSIBLE PHOTOS – User guide

14 © Panos Efstathiadis | all rights reserved

3. CREDITS: The photos used in this guide are available at unsplash.com. The links to the images are as follows:

Photo by Mihai Stefan

Photo by Mihai Stefan

Photo by Karim Manjra

Photo by Mihai Stefan

Photo by Mehrdad Haghighi

Photo by Karsten Winegeart

If you have any questions, please use the contact form on my site: https://www.panosfx.com/misc/contact-us

Panos Efstathiadis

www.PanosFX.com