Layer Aligning

canderson1229

I do a lot of layer masking and for a long time everything was fine and all of my layers lined up with the others, even those I added to the group later in the process. Now this layers I add to the group will not line up with the other layers. I have searched online and now this is my last place to look because nothing I do makes a difference. I have used the tools in Photoshop CC but I am still having this issue. I know it MUST be something very simple but I'm about to pull out my hair, it is slowing me down and I need this fixed. Does anyone have any ideas of what this could be and why my layers will not line up perfectly so that when I mask the layer every thing is in alignment? PLEASE!
Thank you in advance!

Richard

From what you posted, I'm assuming that you already know that the layers should have the same pixel dimensions and that you know how to use the auto align function on selected layers. Maybe you could post a screen shot of the preview with the layers palette clearly visible and a description of what isn't working.

canderson1229

Yes, they are brackets so everything is the identical except f-stop and shutter speed. From Lightroom when I choose a grouping to all open in layers in photoshop its fine, but when I add another to add to the group that is the one that is not lining up. I'll try to recreate it and post an example, but I've used auto align, I've shift clicked, I can't figure out what it is but its been going on a while. I have to resort to doing other things when having them line up is all I need.

Here is a screenshot, this is after I used the auto-align feature. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Hikin' Mike

I don't have Lightroom and I have CS2. When I have several shots (brackets) to layer I use 'ctrl + move tool' to drag and drop.

ziggy53

@canderson1229 said:
Yes, they are brackets so everything is the identical except f-stop and shutter speed. From Lightroom when I choose a grouping to all open in layers in photoshop its fine, but when I add another to add to the group that is the one that is not lining up. I'll try to recreate it and post an example, but I've used auto align, I've shift clicked, I can't figure out what it is but its been going on a while. I have to resort to doing other things when having them line up is all I need.

Here is a screenshot, this is after I used the auto-align feature. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Are you exporting a group from Lightroom to Photoshop and then adding an additional bracketed image from within Photoshop?

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Edit July 28

It looks like you're busy, so I'll proceed with my hunch that you are exporting a group from Lightroom to Photoshop and then adding an additional bracketed image from within Photoshop.

These are two separate processing pipelines. Importantly, it looks like you have "Lens Correction" turned on from within Lightroom, but you are not using "Lens Profiles" within Photoshop. Lightroom appears to be correcting for barrel lens distortion but Photoshop is not enabled to do the same.

I recommend that you use the same processing workflow to maintain the same geometric image relationship between all bracketed images. (Even if you turn on lens profiles in Photoshop they might not be the same as the ones used in Lightroom.)

Instead of importing images directly into Photoshop "always" use Lightroom to export additional images into Photoshop. Yes, this creates a new image in Photoshop instead of a new layer on your existing group, but it will have the lens corrections you need. On the new image simply:

1. Ctrl-A/Cmd-A to select-all of the new image,
2. Ctrl-C/Cmd-C to copy the image,
3. and finally, on the old group-of-images Ctrl-V/Cmd-V to paste the image in a new layer on the old group-of-images.

Voila! In three key-clicks your new image should be added to the group in a new layer, and it should match the corrected lens geometry.

Now you can perform any image alignment necessary from within Photoshop.

canderson1229

Thanks so much Ziggy for your response, I totally missed this! I did figure it out, I had the upright feature on without knowing and it was misaligning the layers! Thanks so much for the response!