Eye merge

Claire Gillo shares her top tips for combining a closeup image of an eye and a landscape silhouette, for a surreal result

For this project, you will need Photoshop (or any image editing program where you can work in layers, like Affinity Photo), a close-up image of an eye (the closer, the better!) and a silhouetted scene. The scenic image could be of anything, so don’t restrict yourself in terms of genre; just take into account that the result works best if the scene has some kind of silhouette outline. That way you can blend the top of the eye down into the scene, to make it look as though it is the eyelashes.

When it comes to blending two images together, you need to ensure your images match in tone and style. I’ve started this step-by-step guide at the combining stage in Photoshop; before this, however, I stylised both the raw files in Lightroom so that they matched in colour and tone.

2 Mask Add a Layer Mask to the eye layer. Get a soft black brush at 100% opacity, and paint over the area under the eye. If you go wrong, switch your brush to white and paint the selection back in. Once you are happy, bring the opacity of the eye layer back up to 100%, zoom in close to the eye line and refine. You can also reduce the opacity of the brush around the eyelashes, to keep a hint of their texture in the image.

3 Blend Add a new layer. Use the Eyedropper Tool to select a colour from the landscape layer. Here I opted for a dark green. Go to the Brush Tool and change the opacity of the brush to 20%. Paint over the eyelid to add a hint of colour, so it looks like eyeshadow. If the result is too harsh, reduce the opacity of the layer. Add another layer and do the same with a black brush. Tweak the result until happy.

1 Combine Open the starting landscape image and rotate it by 180° (Image > Image Rotation > 180°). Bring your eye image over to your landscape image: select the Move Tool and simply drag and drop. Reduce the opacity of the eye layer to 70%. Place the eye into position, resizing if necessary. You want to line up the eyelashes with the silhouette outline. Crop the image to a 2:3 ratio.