Blending Photos

We are going to replace the background behind a subject, but we will also have the model take on the texture and characteristics of the wall.
Step 1: First, using an image of a rather grumpy looking dude from Photospin.com.

Step 2: Set up the layers palette as follows. First, copy of the background so remove the man from the background without messing with the Background layer. Next, create a new layer between the two with the model present and fill it with black.

Step 3: Now we are going to conform a texture to the man's frame, and to do such I will be using a displacement map. I'll go ahead and create that now. If you are following along, go ahead and duplicate the Blue Channel in the channels palette.
Step 4: In this step we are going to bump up the contrast of the new channel in a couple ways. First, use the Shadow/Highlights filter on the channel. My settings are shown below.
Step 5: As with most displacement maps, this will need some blur applied. Apply a Gaussian Blur as seen here.
Step 6: In step-6 bump up the contrast a bit on the channel. My settings are seen below.
Step 7: Once satisfied with the displacement map, save it to a new file, name it, and save it to your hard drive.



Step 8: Close the map once it has been saved. Return to the original image and delete the Blue Copy channel. You won't be needing it any more.
Step 9: Return to the layers palette. Using your favorite selection tool, select the man separate from the background. In this step used the magic wand tool with Add To Selection turned on, selected the background, then inverted the selection.
Step 10: Once your selection has been made, click the Add a mask icon on the bottom of the layers palette. The background will disappear to reveal the black layer beneath.
Step 11: Now open a background image that is fairly close to the size of the original photo. In this case I am going to use a stone wall (or perhaps a stone path) as my pattern of choice. This image is also available at Photospin.com.
Step 12: Make a copy of the stone image and paste it into a new layer beneath the top most layer with the man present, but above the black layer. Don't worry if the image is smaller than the original as seen here: we can fix that in a bit.

Step 13: Duplicate the wall layer and place the new instance of the wall at the top of the layer stack.
Step 14: For this top layer, go ahead and use the Edit => Transform => Scale function to increase the size of the layer so that the entire image is covered.
Step 15: Command/Control+Click the mask on the man layer to generate the selection again. Run the Displace filter with the settings seen below on the selection.



Step 16: Select the inverse and hit the Delete key. This will wipe away the extra stone, leaving only the man covered. Change the Blending Mode for this layer to Overlay. The results can be seen below so you can sheck your progress.





Step 17: Now use the transform tools to increase the size of the stone layer behind the man.
Step 18: Duplicate the top layer and change the blending mode for the new layer to Soft Light. This just helps enhance the features of the stone on the man.
Step 19: Adjust the Saturation of the Soft Light layer, decreasing the Saturation to -80 or so.
Step 20: Reduce the saturation of the Overlay layer also, but only adjust this to about -60.
Step 21: We can still tone this down a bit further. Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer just above the man.



Step 22: You should be getting a fairly decent blend of the subject with his background.
Step 23: As a result of using the Displace tool, some stretching of pixels has occurred on the stone-man layers. If this is the case, first select the stone-man overlay layer, and clean up these stretch marks around the eyes, lips and edges by taking samples of unstretched stone with the Healing Brush and applying the pattern to the stretched areas.





The image shows the man after the clean-up process.
Step 24: Last things to do is reveal the eyes and lips again. To do this simply create masks for the stone-man layers and paint over those areas with Black in their respective masks.
Step 25: Final thing, some shadow would do nicely to make him stand out from the background just a bit. Using the Burn Tool on the stone background and running it around the man's shoulders and head should work nicely. My Burn Tool settings are seen here:

The final image is seen here:

Merging Photos

Here I will show you how to create an amazing photo collage. You can use this for a backdrop for a webpage, your desktop, or simply as a splash screen.

I am using a technical collage image from Photos.com.



After perusing their images, I have chosen another that I’d like to merge with the first. I am going to stay with the tech them, and this next image should work nicely.



There a few ways we can merge these two images, and we will explore a couple. The first I am going to try is Apply Image. In order for Apply Image to work, the Pixel Dimensions of both images have to match exactly. Check the size of the first, then resize the second to match it.



In the first image, duplicate the Background layer.



Now go to Image>Apply Image. Set the source to the second image, with the rest of the settings as seen below.



Before you accept the Apply Image command, take a look at the document. It should look similar to, if not identical, the image below. For my tastes this is a bit dark.



In the Apply Image dialog box, which should still be open, change the Blending Mode to Overlay and set the Opacity to 80%. The results are seen below: do NOT close Apply Image yet. We will do that after we find a good mix.





Now that is looking better, but I think there is still far too much of the original image showing through. Back to the Apply Image dialog box: set the Blending Mode to Screen, but bump the Opacity up to 100%. Let’s take a look now.





Now that is much better… you can actually see both images in the meld, across the entire document. Go ahead and click OK to accept Apply Image.

So, what would happen if we add yet another collage to the mix? And what if, instead of using Apply Image, we merged this new background to the others via simple layer blending modes?

Again, I’ve selected another image from Photos.com. This is still somewhat technical, but in an entirely different way and feel.



For the first attempt at blending, copy and paste the new background into its own layer in the original document. Let’s start with the Hue blending mode.





T colors seem to divide the existing image into chunks.
Ok, rather than continue messing with the background at this point, I’m going to change gears a bit and add a few other elements: namely a person and some text. I apologize that I’m bypassing explaining this step, but that would carry on for a few pages. If you are familiar with my past tutorials, then I’ll bet you can figure out exactly what I did… if not, I will try to explain at a later date.
Anyway, after inserting another photo, some text layers, and manipulating each a bit.
I have come up with this:



That is ultra busy… Not that busy is bad in this instance, but it is a bit overwhelming to my sensibilities. Let’s see if I can’t tone this down a hair. The first thing I want to get rid of are the offensive colors. Pea green… looks good in soup, but not very appetizing here. I can do this in a few ways as well, but we are experimenting, right? Select that blocky color layer in the Layers palette.



Let’s run Match Color, using the image we used in the first Apply Image application. I’m using the settings seen below.




To tone this down even further while keeping the high-voltage tech them going, I’m going to save a copy of this image as a jpeg, then continue working with the new jpeg rather than this huge psd file. Keep the psd file open though… I’ll show you why in a few seconds.

With the new jpeg version open, I’m again going to run apply image, selecting the same image as before as the source, with the settings seen below.



When you accept the Apply Image settings, your image should look something like this.



Much of the color is taken away, and the text and woman are a bit difficult to see… but I like the background far better this way. So how do we get the woman and the text back up to par? Simple… just return to the .psd image and drag the layers you want to enhance into the new document. Use the move tool to slide them in place over the original positions.



When done, the areas I’d like to be subdued are subdued, and those I want to enhance are clearly visible again.

Vector Illustration

I'm going to start a series of more columns dedicated to drawing and illustrating with Photoshop.
Step 1: Start out with a reference photo. Try to pick something easy at first. Its somewhat hard to explain but try to visualize what this picture will look like if it were vectorized. I thought that since much of this photo was black it would be a good candidate. If you don't have a photo to use, go and download the finished PSD file from my website if you want to follow along.

Step 2: Now that we have our photo, its time to start tracing. We're going to use the pen tool for this. In case you haven't noticed, I've been pushing you in many tutorials to use the pen tool. Hopefully some of you have been successful. I firmly believe that if you can master the pen tool and path creation/manipulation that you will open up a whole new set of possibilities with your digital artwork. So, now you're ready. Select the
Pen tool (P). Make sure that the "Shape Layers" option is selected in the top option bar (It looks like this ). This will automatically create a new layer when you start. Set black as the foreground color and trace around the left mountain and trees. Trace all the way around until you close the path. I've made my color red so you can easily see what I've traced. Quick note: You don't need to be perfect. I only spent about a minute
tracing this.

Step 3: Now do the same thing for the right side. Its OK if you go outside of the boundaries of the canvas on this as the shape layer will only show what is inside the image boundary.

Step 4: Then create the beach in a similar way.

Step 5: Next we're going to create a custom gradient for the sky. Select the gradient tool and then click on the gradient preview area in photoshops top option bar. This should bring up the gradient editor. Double click on the right most color stop to bring up the color picker. Now move the eyedropper over the dark purple in the top right of the image. Add several more color stops along the gradient and set their color values to
various colors between the top right and bottom left of the image. See my images below for help if needed.

Step 6: Now that we have our new gradient we need to create the sky. Make a new layer under the first two and make a rectangular selection like I have here.

Step 7: Select the gradient tool and the new gradient that you just created. Set the gradient type to radial. Drag from the bottom left to the top right. See my image here to see what yours should look like so far.

Step 8: Now create another layer and one more rectangular selection for the water. Drag the same gradient in the direction shown in my screenshot here. You may have to drag it a few times to get it right.

Step 9: OK, we're moving along. The next step is to create the palm tree. To do this create a copy of your master photo layer. With that new layer active go to Image->Adjustments->Threshold. Enter 55 for the Threshold Level. Your image should look similar to this.

Step 10: Grab your lasso tool and quickly select all of the black areas and fill them with white. Once this is done hit Ctrl+I to invert the colors.

Step 11: Then select all (Ctrl+A) and copy that layer. Go to your channels palette and paste it into a new channel. Ctrl + click on that channel to select everything that is white. Go to your layers palette again (make sure you don't deselect yet) and create a new layer on top of all of the others. Fill the selection with black. You should have your palm trees now.

Step 12: That's pretty much it. Add a couple of small boats in a similar way. Just grab the pen tool and trace away. Also, you're not limited to just recreating the same picture with the same colors. Its very trendy to use a limited set of colors and create gradients in your objects. Use your imagination. All I did to the second picture below is add some gradient overlay layer styles as well as a 1 pixel purple stroke. It was very easy to change and the great thing about using the pen tool and shape layers for this is that we can scale it to any size we want without loosing quality.