Combine Two Color Images Together
WE’VE COVERED DOUBLE-EXPOSURE images before, but our previous example was a monochrome image, so this time we’ll look at blending color photos together. Working with color files makes things a lot more complicated. You need to be even more discerning in your choice of source images, because not every picture blends well with others.
We’re also going to show you a different way of selecting part of your image: drawing a path. This is a technique used a lot in the publishing industry, and if you’ve ever seen a cutout image in a magazine or newspaper that appears to be leaving its frame, it’s likely it was done this way.
Rather than hunting through your Lightroom library, looking for images that will work, going out with your camera in search of them can inject a bit of fun back into your photography. Whatever you do, remember there’s no wrong way to mess with your photos—you can always undo. 1 REMOVE THE BACKGROUND First of all, we need to separate our young lady from her background. The plain gray of the backdrop makes it a candidate for the Magic Wand tool, which selects contiguous areas of the same color, but there are some strands of hair falling away from her face that might interfere with the process. We also want to show you something new. So select the Pen tool, which looks like the nib of an old-fashioned fountain pen, and prepare to enter the strange world of vector paths. We’re using Photoshop CC for this, but all the tools are available in Photoshop Elements from version 11 onward.
2 DRAW A PATH The Pen tool is the backbone of Adobe Illustrator, where it creates the lines and shapes that are the foundations of every illustration, but in Photoshop it serves a lesser purpose. It draws a “path”—essentially, a line that’s defined purely by numbers, rather than pixels, and which is invisible until you “stroke” some color on to it, or otherwise manipulate it. We like to click the “rubber band” checkbox on the settings cog, which makes the path you’re drawing more visible, but this is a matter of personal preference. Click once at the bottom of the image, where the young lady meets the backdrop, and a square appears. This is a “point.” Click again a little further up, and a second one appears, and you can drag the mouse to make the path between the points fit exactly on the border. You need to make sure that your path only has to make one curve between points [ Image A]. After the second point, your path may bend off in a direction you don’t want it to; Alt-click on the point to get it under control.
3 USE THE FEATHER TOOL This can be a fiddly way of selecting, but it’s very accurate and not as frustrating as drawing freehand with the Marquee tool. When you get to the hair, stay a few pixels inside the border, and ignore any stray hairs. You’ll get a very smooth edge as a result, but it will look more natural—and lead to less tooth-grinding—than if you try to envelope every single hair in your path. Once you’ve got to the bottom of the lady, opposite where you started, join the path up by clicking on the first point again. Then, on the Paths palette (“Window > Paths,” if it’s not already visible), double-click the “Work Path” to give it a name and save it, then, with it selected, click the dotted circle icon at the bottom of the palette—this loads it as a selection. We’re going to feather the edge of the selection to make it softer, so head to “Select > Modify > Feather,” and choose a Radius of 3 [ Image B].
4 ADD YOUR SECOND IMAGE Clear away the background by inverting the selection (“Select > Inverse”) and Clearing it (“Edit > Clear”). Invert it back again, then save the selection (“Select > Save Selection”) and deselect it. Open the second image you’ll be using. We’ve chosen some fruit, the dark reds and blues of which should blend nicely with our model’s dark hair and cardigan. Bring this second image in as a new layer, putting it at the top of the stack in the Layers palette. Move and scale it so you think it’s in a good place, dropping the Opacity slider in the Layers palette to help you, if you need it.
5 USE BLEND AND OPACITY Load your saved selection back (“Select > Load Selection”), and it should appear on top of the fruit. Hit the “Layer Mask” button we showed you last month—at the bottom of the Layers palette, looking like a rectangle with a circular hole in it—and you should get a young-lady-shaped picture of fruit [ Image C]. Changing the Blend Mode of the top layer to “Multiply” allows the lower to show through, darkening the colors where they overlap. Experiment with which Blend Mode and Opacity level looks best—in our example, “Screen” brought out the model’s face, while “Hard Light” really allowed the colors of the fruit to show through, but needed us to ease back on the opacity to avoid looking like something from a yogurt advert [ Image D].
6 FINISHING TOUCHES If you want to remove areas from the blend, click the black and white portrait of the Mask itself in the Layer’s palette, and paint white on to it with the Brush tool. This subtracts areas from the Layer Mask, while painting black would have the opposite effect. We’ve gone over the girl’s face in white, removing all traces of fruit from it [ Image E]. When you’re happy with your final image, save it as a PSD file to preserve the layers, then go to “Layer > Flatten” to merge all the layers into one, and “File > Save As” to create a JPEG.