PS Question

[Carolineccb1]

When you extract from one photo and paste into another (replacing backgrounds for instance), how do you blend the two images successfully? The book I have tells me how to do the first bit (extracting and dragging to another pic), it also suggests how you might blend colours, but the edges of the pasted part of the image still look really sharp. I tried bluring the edges of the pasted image slightly, but my partner spotted it when I asked him what he thought.

I've used 'Extract' from the Filters menu, I've also tried using the pen tool (which gives much better results). However, when I drag the cut out to the new immage, you can spot it a mile off

Any suggestions?

[VxDuncan]

ooohhh.... can of worms....

One, simple way to do it is when you have your selection of the area you want to copy made, use the feather function to soften the edges of the cut out area (Select Menu->Feather). Start with 1px for smallish images, work up. Soft things like sheep and clouds may need bigger feather.

More advanced would be to paste the whole of the top (cutout) image onto a new layer, and create a layer mask to select the areas you want to be visible or invisible. Basically the mask is an editable grey map (alpha channel) of the layer that gives you loads of control over the opacity of the layer - white being visible, black invisible. The shades of grey in between different amounts of transparency. It's quite a bit more involved though, so would suggest going with the feathered selection and working from there.

[Carolineccb1]

Thanks, Duncan. I'll experiment with the feathering and then try and learn more about the masks. PS itself is like Pandora's Box! I purchased a couple of books (based on advice from the forum), have been working my way through them and now I'm getting addicted