- Hi, I'm Glyn Dewis and in this video
I wanna take you through a built-in function in Photoshop
that can help you get the very best results
when blending and masking images together.
(camera shutter clicking)
Okay, so on screen you can see the picture now
of Ian where we want to actually use the head.
And here now we've got a tab here we've got the body.
So, before I show you the actual technique I want to cover,
let's just have a look at a couple of ways
that you might think of blending these two together.
What you might think of doing is, literally,
just with the Move tool dragging the picture
of Ian's head, holding the shift key down so it drops
straight on top and then simply lowering
the opacity using the Move tool to try and line them up.
And that's gonna take quite a bit of time.
If we just take it back to 100% opacity.
And the reason I say that is because if we
turn that layer on and off you can see
that they're not perfectly lined up.
The chair and the floor certainly aren't
but obviously also we've got the issue where
Ian's moved his arms and the head
isn't quite in the same position as well,
even though he's just looking away
the head has dropped down just a little bit as well.
So, lowering the opacity could take a bit of time.
Now, another way that you could maybe look
at blending images together is by using a Blend mode.
So now that we have our two images
stacked here in the Layers panel,
we can come here to the top layer
and change the Blend mode from Normal to Difference.
And you'll notice the image goes quite dark
with a few kind of weird colours in there
but basically the idea here now is, with the Move tool,
you can drag the top image around,
or actually just use the arrow keys on your keyboard there,
to move it so that it actually lines up
and goes into the correct position.
Now if you're using images that did perfectly line up
what you would notice is that when they are all lined up
the image here goes pretty much completely black.
So this is a really great way of lining up images.
However, in this case it doesn't work
because what we actually have here
is the picture of Ian on the top layer
has been slightly angled as well
so it's not just a case of moving it around.
We would also need to angle it.
And that could take quite a bit
of time to do that correctly.
So what I wanna do then, is show you a way that we can
now blend them together literally with just one click.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna come over to the File menu
and choose Scripts and then Load Files Into Stack.
And when I do that we get this dialogue box up here.
Now we can actually just use files
that we've got on our computer.
We can even navigate to a folder of images that we have
on our computer to use this particular technique.
However, I actually have the two images open
already in Photoshop so what I can do is
come to the menu option here which says Add Open Files.
And if I click on that you'll see that the two images
that are open now get loaded into
this central area just here.
Now at the bottom we've got a couple of checkboxes.
The first one says
Attempt to Automatically Align the Source Images.
I'm gonna put a little tick in there.
Now the one underneath it says
Create a Smart Object after Loading Layers.
I'm not gonna use that option this time,
however keep an eye on the YouTube channel
because in a video I'm gonna producing
pretty soon you will see how I use that
and you'll be amazed how incredibly useful that is.
But that's not for this particular video.
Now that I've got these two files loaded up,
we've got the little checkbox here saying
Attempt to Automatically Align the Source Images.
Note the word attempt, might not work every single time.
Now I'm gonna click OK.
And very, very quickly you're gonna see
that you're gonna get a result.
We've now got three tabs.
We've got the two original images here.
But now we have a third tab that's been created,
let's just double click on the Hand tool
to bring it nice and close,
where it's actually lined up the images.
So now we've still got Ian 1 and Ian 2
lined up in the Layers panel here
but look what happens when I turn off the top layer.
Can you see how the chair and the floor
now are absolutely perfectly lined up?
We've got a little bit of movement in Ian but that's fine,
we only want to actually mask in his head.
So now that we've got that...
In fact, let's just put Ian 2,
this layer here that contains just the body,
let's put that at the top of the layer stack
'cause all we need to mask out is the head
as opposed to the rest of the body.
So now then, now that we've got that at the top
so we've got the body at the top, head at the bottom,
all I'm going to do is add a Layer Mask to the top layer.
Then get a brush with a black foreground colour.
Let's make sure that brush is nice and soft.
And then all I'm going to do is come in
and paint with the black brush on Ian's head.
Now, when we use Layer Masks we know that
black conceals, white reveals.
So what's happening here is it's concealing the original
head that Ian had turning away
and it's revealing the head underneath.
So something like that.
So you can see that Photoshop has made absolutely...
Actually that's probably not the best (laughs)
best motion to show but can you see how quickly
Photoshop has allowed us to align these images,
blend them together, so that all I need to do then,
quick Layer Mask, quick use of a black brush
and bang, we can blend it all in.
Now the rest of the image, you might notice that there's
just a little bit of, kind of, not maybe halo
but a lighter grey going 'round the outside there.
All I would simply do for that maybe
is just add a blank layer, maybe get the Clone Stamp tool.
Because we're using a blank layer,
make sure that it says All Layers here.
Change the opacity to 'round about 50%.
And all I'll do is just Option- or Alt-click
just some of the area around here just to kind of blend over
a little bit more of that darker area,
so that we can blend that nicely in like so.
And then the rest of the image
I'll just come in, get my Crop tool.
Crop down on here like this, little bit tighter in like so.
And then we'll finish off with it
just by adding a Lasso tool just on that little bit
to get rid of that little Octobox
that's in the picture there.
Edit, Fill, choose Content-Aware, and click OK.
And it does a fantastic job.
Now, in another video on my YouTube channel
which should be linked above,
you can see a little card appearing now,
I'll show you how you can actually change the perspective
of this picture which is where
you can actually change the angle of the floor
when you're using the Clone Stamp tool.
But pretty much, that's all I've got for you for this video.
Just a really great technique for blending images together
so that you get the best results
when you're doing your Layer Masks.