Make an Establishing Shot Using the Perspective Grid Tool in Adobe Illustrator

by Sara Berntsson

What You'll Be Creating

In this tutorial you'll learn what an establishing shot is and how it is used in comics. Through reference gathering and composition sketches, we will try making a modern city street view which will act as our establishing shot example.

Using our sketch as a base, we will draw the final version using the Perspective Grid Tool, making sure we get a solid-looking cityscape.

1. Preparing Your Establishing Shot

The most common way to start off a story-focused comic is by showing the reader where the comic will take place. This first shot of the setting is usually referred to as an establishing shot, and besides creating an atmosphere for the story, it can also give some subtle information to the reader about the characters or environment.

Notice how the dialogue gets a different meaning depending on which establishing shot is used. In the first example it seems more literal, referring to their surroundings, while in the second one we can assume from the surroundings that they are talking about their relationship.

Step 1

The first thing I do is to look up reference photos which I can draw inspiration from when I do my sketch. When I find things I like, I make little studies and notes of them until I feel I have enough ideas to try sketching my own city view.

Step 2

In a vast and intricate scene like a modern cityscape, there is no real way, or need, to keep exact track of where the characters are. Unless it is integral to the plot, having the characters just be surrounded by tall buildings and big signs will convey the feeling of being in a large city.

However, when you have a recurring setting that is a confined space—like an apartment—it becomes more important to have your environment planned out. You do not want your readers to notice that the rooms keep changing because you are making it up as you go.

To prepare for this, it can be useful to make a simple top view plan for your setting. You can either have this as a reference when drawing, or you might even want to take it one step further and recreate the environment in 3D.

Step 3

Using your reference photos and sketches, start drawing the establishing shot in the same dimensions as the panel will be. Boxes are your friends here.

If you keep thinking in boxes, you can break down complex shapes into more manageable ones. Do not bother with details for now—just focus on the composition.

2. Using the Perspective Grid Tool

Step 1

Import your sketch into Illustrator with File > Place, and turn on the Perspective Grid Tool by going to View > Perspective Grid and choosing the Two Point Perspective. 

Step 2

You will get a view like this. As you can see there are a lot of tiny handles on the grid with which you can manipulate it. Try to align the perspective with the sketch as best you can. It does not have to be perfect.

Step 3

You will notice a small icon in the top left which contains a cube. The orange side of the cube indicates that the orange side of the grid is the currently selected one. Use the Rectangle Tool to see how the shapes are aligned with the orange side of the grid.

Step 4

To switch from the orange grid to the blue, press and hold the tool button for the Perspective Grid Tool to get the hidden option Perspective Selection Tool (Shift-V). With this tool selected, press the left side of the cube in the upper left corner. Now the blue grid has been selected instead, and you can start drawing shapes across it.

Step 5

Now all the objects you draw will conform to the blue grid instead. Start blocking in the big shapes at first.

Step 6

There is also a green grid on the bottom, which corresponds with the bottom side of the cube in the top left icon. Select the green grid and start drawing the pedestrian crossing.

Step 7

By holding the Alt key while dragging the object, you can make a copy of it. From here simply press Command-D a couple of times repeat the last step, adding copies with the same distance. Repeat the process for the other side of the road.

Step 8

Keep adding rectangle shapes, switching between the different sides of the grid as needed. If you need to get a clearer look at your sketch every now and then, go to View > Outline, or Command-Y for short.

Step 9

To turn off the grid, go to View > Perspective Grid > Hide Grid. When you need it again, just go to the same place to turn it on again.

Use Command-Shift-I to toggle between hiding and showing the grid. Do this when you quickly want to draw something that is seen from the front.

Step 10

Keep building the cityscape by adding the larger shapes. As you can see, I have not followed my sketch completely. In some places the correct perspective turned out to be quite different from what I drew, and that is completely fine. The sketch is just the base to get started on.

Step 11

Now, time to add some windows to our buildings. I start by making a front-facing window using the Rectangle Tool.

Then I select the Perspective Selection Tool by pressing Shift-V, and drag the window while holding the Alt key. This makes a copy of the window, which I place onto the building on the blue side of the grid.

Step 12

I make another copy, and then switch to the orange side of the grid. I copy a window in one end of the building and another at the other end of it. Selecting both of them, I go to Object > Blend > Make (Alt-Command-B), which adds window copies in the space between the ones I have already laid out.

This is too many windows! I go to Object > Blend > Blend Options, set the spacing category to Specified Steps, and select 1 instead.

From here I select the finished rows of windows and Alt-drag them down to add another row. Make sure you have the Perspective Selection Tool selected while you do this to keep the objects aligned to the perspective.

Step 13

Moving on, we can start adding new types of windows to the other buildings using the same technique as before.

I use a simpler design for the windows on the buildings in the background. With Blend we can quickly make everything come together.

Step 14

As you keep working on your image, you might need to adjust the grid every once in a while for the buildings in the background.

Step 15

For the buildings far back, I want to add some lines instead of windows. By going to Window > Swatch Libraries > Patterns > Basic Graphics > Basic Graphics_Lines you will get a panel of different patterns to choose from.

3. Add Details to the City

Step 1

We are starting to get a decent-looking cityscape, but it still needs some extra finesse. Take the time to look over the weight of your line art. A good rule of thumb is that objects far away should have thinner lines and objects up close have thicker.

Step 2

To add some graphics to the signs in the picture, I am going to use some designs I have made before. I make a frame around the design I am going to use and group them together.

We are going to use Envelope Distort to place the design inside the sign. Select the object that is the sign, copy it with Command-C and paste in front with Command-F. Make sure that this object is placed above the design object. 

Step 3

Select both the frame you just pasted and the design object, and go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Top Object.

This action transforms your design to the dimensions of the sign. By adding a frame to our design which has a similar shape to the sign, we've achieved a good-looking transformation.

Step 4

I repeat the same process for the other sign. Copy and paste in front the sign object.

Making sure the sign object is above the design, I select both, and use the shortcut for Envelope Distort > Make with Top Object (Alt-Command-C).

Step 5

I add some hand-drawn cracks and scratches here and there, to avoid having the city look too artificial. Using a brush with a small stroke setting, I look for ways to add some "dirt" to the buildings.

Step 6

Finally I make some objects black instead of white, and add some text and symbols to the last signs in the picture. This adds some extra depth to our city.

From here you can choose to add color, grayscale or half tones, depending on your art style. Or you can feel accomplished having a finished black and white city for your establishing shot.

Summary

In this tutorial you have learned what an establishing shot in comics is, and how a well planned one can both bring atmosphere to your comic as well as giving the audience information. 

In Illustrator we can greatly speed up our process by using the Perspective Grid Tool. By not having to focus on drawing your guidelines correctly, you will have more room to be creative, instead of doing the boring work.

I hope the techniques in this tutorial will be of help to you as you create the stage where your comic will play out.

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3 Precise and Subtle Noise Reduction Methods in Adobe Photoshop

by Marie Gardiner

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In previous tutorials I’ve covered noise removal through various methods. Complete noise removal isn't always possible, though. Sometime we just have to accept some level of noise in our image. What level of noise is acceptable? What kinds of noise are acceptable? The following techniques won't rid your image of noise but they will change the way noise looks, and hopefully they'll give you an overall more pleasing picture.

1. Noise Reduction on the RBG Channels

Here is the image we’ll use in our examples:

A noisy example image [photo: Marie Gardiner]

It’s incredibly noisy, and genuinely so: I accidentally had the ISO cranked up on a bright day!

Assess the Image: Evaluate Noise on the RGB Channels

Most digital images are a composite of information held in Red, Green, and Bluechannels. You can use the RGB channels to help you to see where exactly the noise is causing the most trouble in your picture. If you don’t have the channels window open in Photoshop, click Window and Channels.

Hit Window > Channels to see your RGB layers

You’ll see your picture broken down into three channels: Red, Green and Blue. You want to evaluate each channel to look for noise. Here is each channel for my sample image:

Red Channel

The red channel for the example image

The red channel is incredibly noisy, pretty much across the whole image.

Green Channel

The green channel for the example image

Green isn’t so bad apart from the trees and riverbank.

Blue Channel

The blue channel for the example image

Blue isn’t bad either; mostly the noise is in the water but you can’t see that as much due to the nature of the image.

Apply Noise Reduction on the RGB Channels

You can apply a filter on a particular channel. Taking my Red channel, which was the worst for visible noise, I selected the sky and applied a Surface Blur from theFilters list.

I've selected the sky and applied a surface blur

Surface blur will take larger areas of the same colour and blur it without ruining your edges too much, so you can try applying it to the whole picture. If it’s a particularly noisy image, like mine, applying this strength of blur to the whole image would soften the details considerably, despite only being on one channel.

So, rather than applying the blur filter to the particular channel, let's use a noise reduction filter instead. Hit Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise:

Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise

Then click Advanced and press the Per Channel tab:

Click advanced then per channel

You’ll see you can check each channel for noise here too. The dialogue will allow you to click on the actual image to see a particular section in the preview. You also have the option to Preserve Details, so you can experiment with moving the sliders to see which works best. 

First, select the channel with the most noise. Now reduce noise using this process:

1. Move the Strength slider to the right, past the level where noise reduction starts to detrimentally effect the image. The image will start to look smudged.
2. Then move the slider slowly to the left, or use the up and down arrow keys, to gently reduce the filter Strength until you return to an acceptable image quality. 
3. Repeat this process with the Preserve Details slider to fine tune the filter. 

Then do the same steps for the remaining two channels.

2. Reduce Noise in Lab Colour Mode

Let's process our example in another way. This method will tackle colour noise more directly while preserving as much resolution in the image as possible.

Hit Edit > Convert to Profile and choose Lab Colour:

Go to edit > convert to profile > lab colour

You’ll notice in your Channels window that instead of RGB you now haveLightness, a and b (L, A, B… Lab!).

Lab colour layer breakdown

The different between Lab and RGB is basically (very basically!) that Lab is how we see colour as people, as opposed to how a machine or device might interpret colour, like your monitor.

The Lightness channel, as it suggests, contains the information about the luminance, or black and white information, of your image. The a channel holds green and magenta information and b yellow and blue.

This method is very simple: select the a or b channel and apply a blur filter. Because the a and b channels hold colour information only, not detail, you can tackle colour noise without taking away any of the detail in the image (held in the Lightnesslayer).

Often when we are disturbed by noise in an image what we are actually bothered by is colour noise. When you remove the colour noise you'll likely find that the luminance noise that remains is actually rather pleasing!

3. Add Noise to Hide Noise

When we think of noise we usually think of random noise. This is a very common kind of noise but it is not the only kind.

High ISO images suffer from all sorts of image degradation. Depending on the camera and the situation you might encounter loss of resolution, harsh and unnatural tonal jumps between bright and dark areas, chromatic aberration, colour shifts, banding, or reciprocity failure. Noise is any irregularity in the picture that is part of the capture but detracts or diminishes the image quality. 

Of course there are methods we can use to improve these defects, but sometimes adding random noise is the fastest (and sometimes best) way to improve an image. 

Plus, noise isn’t always a bad thing: it can add character and interest to a photograph. If your photo is already a little noisy why not add more grain to make it look purposeful?

Prague Funfair Orchestra [photo: Marie Gardiner]

This is a picture I took of the Prague Funfair Orchestra and converted to black and white. 

Assess the Image

The conversion definitely gave it more character and I think some grain would really add to it too. This a fairly high contrast image, with deep blacks in the shadows of their pants (and the gate) and bright whites on the hats, but it still has lots of nice texture. 

I want to keep that nice texture and the high dynamic range without crushing tones or losing detail. As I adjust contrast with this image I'm in danger of creating solids blocks of black or white. I particularly want to keep the smooth gradation in the hats, which have some parts that are very nearly completely white. A touch of noise will help avoid creating areas of solid tone and keep the smooth gradation that creates the three-dimensional look of the hats.  

Add Noise

The easy and ‘quick fix’ way to add noise in Photoshop is to simply hit Filter > Noise> Add Noise.

Filter > noise > add noise

Which, at 10%, will give this:

Noise added at 10%

Alternative Method: Add a Noise Layer as Smart Object

If you’d like more control over what you’re adding though, try this method.

First, create a new layer:

Create a new layer and name it Noise or similar

I’ve named mine ‘Noise’. Choose Overlay or Soft-Light as the Mode and then tickFill with Overlay-neutral colour which will say 50% grey for those modes.

Choose Overlay as your mode and hit fill with 50% grey

Hit OK, then right-click your new layer and convert it to a Smart Object:

Convert your new layer to a smart object

Then go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise like before. Have monochromatic ticked if you’re using a colour image and select Gaussian for more ‘random’ noise orUniform for more ordered noise.

I used 10% again so we can compare it to before:

10% noise added again but with more flexibility on the layer

Looks about equal, right? The effect is the same as hitting Add Noise but with the added bonus that I can now adjust the Opacity if I wish, change the Blending Modeor even add a mask and use a soft brush to erase certain parts of the added grain.

 Conclusion

There are so many ways to reduce noise in Photoshop that it’s hard to know which to choose or which is right for your image. If you’re looking to reduce noise without applying something to your image as a whole, then using channels is definitely worth a try, particularly on images which are heavy in colour noise. Channel methods are more subtle and you may not find they’re what you’re looking for where images arevery noisy on the whole.

If your image is really grainy and any kind of channel noise reduction is too subtle for you, then I’d recommend a bespoke piece of software or plugin for Photoshop such as Noiseware.

Remember though, not all noise is bad! Sometimes it can help fix other issues. And it can add depth and character to your photo, so don’t dismiss an image just because it’s grainy. You can always add more grain to give it that ‘film’ look.

Try a few of the methods to see which works best and which you prefer, but if you find yourself getting frustrated with the picture put it to one side and come back to it later. Sometimes it’s hard to see the potential in something when we’ve worked on it for too long. Better to use fresh eyes and decide if you’re going to remove as much of the grain as possible, or add some more to make it something new and different from what you imagined.

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