Um... Masking??

[kerrym]

I have a copy of my friends' wedding photos. They were taken by a very confident student whom they paid, and the photos are crap. They said they were disappointed and now that I've seen them, I understand why.

About 80% of them are taken on 45 degree angles. This can work fine at times, but not in this abundance! Fortunately I had used my photos and somebody elses, and put them into an wedding album with Shutterfly. The couple have said that now they have something to show people.

But as for their "official" photos, I've taken the task to crop and straighten as many as I can, and I'd like to dress up a few too if possible. They did express disappointment that they hadn't managed to get one particular family shot with the couple and their children from previous marriage, in one photo.

I'm hoping to do the magic and put two or three pictures into one, where they blend into each other. The only time I've done this was with a photoshop manual in front of me, and it took ages. However, I don't have that now....

Can anybody direct me to a tutorial which will show me how to do this please, or advise me here?

[csavery]

There are probably many ways to do this. But I will describe one fairly simple and unsophisticated way that should work well. You want to get both photos into the same image on different layers. Here's a rough step by step...

Make sure your layers palette is open on the right side of PS.
Open 1st image.
Open 2nd image.
Position each window so that 1st window is visible under 2nd one.
Hold down alt and drag the layer from the layers palette onto the 1st image.
This will create a second layer in the 1st image so that both are in one work area now - with the 2nd image visible and blocking out that 1st image under it.
Now you can close the 2nd image as you shouldn't need it again.

So looking at the layers palette - click to select the upper layer and click the small icon at the bottom of the palette that looks like a circle (mask button). This will create a mask for the upper layer.

Click on the small rectangle in the upper layer - that is the mask thumbnail - it should be white right now and this indicates that nothing is getting through from below ie. there is no mask yet.

Now you will draw on the image with either a white or black brush to create the transparency between the two layers. You can use a large brush to do big areas quickly and a small one to do fine detail - and you can zoom in to see fine detail better. You can use a soft edge brush (controlled from the brush tool area) to adjust how well the layers blend.
You can also adjust the transparency slider at the top in brush controls to control how strong the brush acts. This can help with getting masked edges just right.

The nice thing about working on the mask like this is that it's non- destructive so you can go back and open up and close the layer transparency as you need and fix mistakes easily.

Select the cross-arrow (move) tool upper right of tool box to move the top layer relative to the other for positioning. You will want to do that after you have made some of the lower layer visible since otherwise you can't really tell where you are.

You may also use an adjustment levels layer to alter the tones of one layer relative to the other so that they match better.

Hope this all helps you out. It' is much easier then it sounds....

[cmit]

You might find this useful http://www.dreamvision-entertainment.co ... ndtut.html

It uses plenty of graphics to describe the process.

If you know anyone who has a copy of Scott Kelby's "Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers" there is an excellent Blending tutorial on page 334.

Good luck!!

[kerrym]

Thanks peoplez I'm looking forward to trying this again, and getting something together. It will take me a while as I work full time, and also busy working on painting and renovations which is a bit of a priority But this project will be at the top of my playtime list, so will endeavour to show you the results, and welcome your feedback.

[halesr]

Cmit, thanks for sharing the link. There are lots of free textures at that site.--Rene

[simplephotography]

Can anyone tell me how you use textures to manipulate images?