Blending together different exposures easily in Photoshop Elements

James Paterson shows you how to create fantastical shadow mash-ups with some simple, creatively effective, Photoshop layering skills

This month we’re getting creative with shadows! We’ve transformed our shadow into a bird-like character, but you can use these skills to mould your shadow into whatever you want. To do this we create black shapes, then soften and blend them with the existing shadows. We used a few photos of birds to create the wings and beak for our sinister birdman, and we’ll use the Blend If command to blend our fake shadows with the texture below. It’s a handy feature that enables us to see which parts of a layer are visible based on their brightness. Here we can use it to darken the road, making it look real, while allowing some of the brighter textures to come through.

We will also make use of the Field Blur command. This clever, underrated, blur filter enables us to create a steady transitional blur. We simply set pins across the image with different strengths, and the filter will create a blend of blur between the selected points. Usually the filter is useful for creating realistic focus fall-off, but here we use it to mimic the way that shadows become softer the further they extend from their source along the ground.