Adobe After Effects - Adobe Photoshop - The 3D Picture Trick

Short Description
There are a multitude of effects within the aptly-named After Effects. Particle simluations, depth tricks, 3-D motion, procedural animations of every kind imaginable. Yet, one is reminded of a simple fact - a great use of simple technology can steal the show over lightning and laser cannons, explosions and “Matrixware”.
This tip consistently gets more oohs and aahs than just about anything else in After Effects. Why? Because it reminds us of the point above - the music isn’t in the piano and creativity isn’t in the box with the software. Hopefully, this will give you some ideas for thinking “outside the software box”

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Content
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Okay, fair warning… Like so many things, this trick looks easier than it is. That is to say, the mechanics of the effect are fairly easy – you take a photograph, cut out the people and place each of them on their own layer in Photoshop, bring that layered Photoshop document into After Effects, stagger the layers in 3-D, then animate a camera around it. But there are many steps along the way that can ruin the effect. Here are some guidelines to keep in mind…
1. Pictures with several levels of depth – but not too many – work best. A bad example is a photograph of a painting framed on a wall. There’s just not a lot of depth there. On the opposite end of the spectrum is a picket fence with 75 levels of depth, one for each picket. If you want to spend the time to isolate each of the pickets, that’s up to you. (For the record, I would use one picket and duplicate it.) An image with 5-10 layers is probably a good range.
2. Since part of the work to be done involves restoring the background behind the people in the scene, your cloning/rubber stamp skills will be put to the test. Part of what makes this effect believable is how well the background behind the people is reconstructed. In some areas, you may not have a background to copy from so you’ll need an artistic eye. (Another way of saying this is you’ll quickly learn how much you can get away with. Unlike a still image, your audience will be somewhat forgiving because the image is in motion.)
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Step 1 – Analyze your image and plan how you are going to separate the elements from the background. (Come to think if it, this is good advice for any Photoshop project. Ponder it for a while, take a walk, get away from the computer, then come back. It works wonders.)
Open the image in Photoshop. Now, before you start selecting anything, be clear on what you want to isolate and think about the structure of the image. A good example in this image is the woman on the right. She has her hand on a chair. Now, while the chair and table are *technically* behind her, having them move independently of her would be tricky to achieve. So, I established early on that she and the table would move together. Since she’s not that far in front of the table, the perspective should be okay.
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