In high school I was taught one-point and two-point perspective, but I discovered three-point perspective on my own. I didn’t figure it out until later, but three-point perspective was overlooked because the objects we were instructed to depict originated from a single vertical line and were drawn on a flat plane and viewed head-on. You don’t experience a third vanishing point unless you get on top of an object or underneath it, at which point horizontal and vertical lines all become, to some degree (pun), diagonal. Thus began my passion for the line, grids, geometry and perspective in art, whether prevalent or completely absent.

Having studied Medieval art taught me why the modern day artists could not properly convey the idea of distance, scale and proportion: they hadn't discovered true mathematical perspective yet: the way lines on a grid disappear into the distance from your position on the grid to the point at which they converge — The Vanishing Point.

Thankfully the Italians figured out where to put things on the grid or else the folks at Adobe might not have been able to come up with this fantastic development for Photoshop CS2.

For those of you who find yourselves painfully retouching floors or walls in photographs taken at such a steep angle you have to constantly designate new origin points with the clone stamp, just you wait. An article in the July Annual of Comm Arts (page 207) states that the folks at Adobe, who either just thought of this or got tired of the influx of complaints or suggestions, are going to be integrating "Vanishing Point" into Photoshop CS2. It was one sentence long and touched on no details, but it conveyed to me exactly what I've been jonesin' for all these years.

Basically, the gist I got from that one sentence is that instead of having to stamp out each line on a converging grid, and having to click to designate new origin points to keep those lines both straight and relatively convergent, all you have to do is click ONCE to calculate the vanishing point for that grid, stamp away and the mathematical perspective will remain true to that point of convergence.

I don’t know how or if it will handle two-point, or even three-point perspective, but this is certainly a brilliant revolution, showing that even tools for maintaining true mathematical perspective are just as necessary to us in 2005 as they were to Giotto in the early 14th century.

If this perspective jargon has you frustrated: Click to Open Web Page Click to Open Web Page Click to Open Web Page

Postscript: I realize now that my speculation in paragraph 5 was a little off, but I feel I will be happy with this filter.