Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV with another Photoshop quick tip.
If you're using CS6 or later, I'm going to show you how to automatically stitch or combine
images together that have very different brightness, contrast, color and tone.
Auto-Blend doesn't work with Smart Objects, video layers, 3D layers, or background layers.
For this example, I'm going to stitch the face from this guy onto her face
and use Auto Blend to blend them together.
I downloaded both of these photos from Shutterstock.
This tutorial is for those who are already familiar with the basic functions of Photoshop.
As I mentioned, I'll use this photo as the base.
Since the outside corners of her eyebrows extend pretty far, I'll remove them, but first
I'll make a copy of the layer by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J, so I always have the original photo intact.
If you have areas in your base image that you want to remove, open your Patch Tool
and draw around the area you want to remove.
Drag the selected source area to a destination area that you want to use to repair it.
To deselect it, press Ctrl or Cmd + D. I'll repeat this with the other eyebrow.
Open your other image.
We'll make a selection around the area that you want to patch onto your base image.
Open the Lasso Tool and make sure "Feather" is 0 pixels.
Draw around the area that you want to place onto your base image.
Open your Move Tool by pressing "v" on your keyboard and drag it onto the tab of your base image.
Drag it down and release.
To resize and reposition it, open your Transform Tool by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T. Position
and resize it over the base image.
Ctrl-click or Cmd-click the top layer to make a selection of its shape.
Go to Select, Modify and "Contract".
I'll contract it 10 pixels.
Depending on your document's size and resolution, you may want to adjust the amount.
Make Layer 1 active and press the "Delete" key to delete inside the contracted selection.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + D to deselect it.
Shift-click the top layer to make it active, as well, and go to Edit and "Auto-Blend Layers".
Since we're blending stacked layers, tick "Stack Images".
Make sure "Seamless Tones and Colors" is checked and if you're using a later version of Photoshop,
check "Content Aware Fill Transparent Areas" just to ensure that all areas will be filled
and blended well.
If you see this warning, just click OK.
Auto-Blend applied layer masks as needed to each layer to mask out over or underexposed
areas, as well as, mask out content differences to create a relatively seamless composite.
Since we have the composite layer, we can hide the layers with their layer masks.
Next, we'll adjust our image's brightness and contrast.
Scroll to the top of the Layers panel and click the Adjustment Layer icon.
Click "Levels".
We want the adjustment layer to restrict itself to affect just the composite layer below it.
To do this, click the Clipping Mask icon or press Alt + Ctrl + G on Windows
or Option + Cmd + G on a Mac.
You can also go to Layer and "Create Clipping Mask".
For this particular image, I'll drag the Input Mid-tone slider to the right to darken the
mid-tones, however, feel free to adjust the input settings for your image.
If you want to restore the background or any other area from your original base image - no problem.
Make the Levels layer mask active.
We'll brush in black over it, which will mask out the areas we brightened or darkened.
Open your Brush Tool and make sure your foreground color is black.
Open your Brush picker and pick a soft, round brush.
We'll adjust its size in a moment.
Make its Hardness 0% and the Opacity & Flow both 100%.
To make your brush bigger or smaller, make sure your CapsLock key is off
and press the right or left bracket key on your keyboard.
Now, brush over the background and any other areas you'd like to restore from the original base photo.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
Thanks for watching!