STEP BY STEP Pane-less compositing skills

1 Drop in the city

Open window01 and 02 into Photoshop. Grab the Move tool then go to the 02 image. Drag the image to the tab of the 01 document, then down to copy the image over. If you need to resize the added image, hit Cmd/Ctrl+T then hold Shift and drag the corners of the box.

2 Blend the pixels

Go to the Layers panel (Window>Layers). Double-click the top layer to open the Layer Style dialog box. Go to the Underlying Layer sliders at the bottom and drag the black point to 120. Next hold Alt and drag the right half of the black point to split it for a softer transition. Hit OK.

3 Paint a mask

Click the Add Layer Mask icon in the Layers panel. Grab the Brush tool and hit D then X to set the colour to black and paint to hide parts of the city layer where it wouldn’t show, like the edges of the window. Try painting at a lower opacity in the corners to fade them out slightly.

4 Adjust the colours

Highlight the top layer then click the circular Create Adjustment Layer icon in the Layers panel and choose Hue/Saturation. In the Properties panel click the square Clip To Layer icon at the bottom, then decrease Saturation and increase Lightness as shown.

5 Reposition the window

To reposition the window, highlight the middle layer then click on the link between the image and mask thumbnails to unlink them. Highlight the image thumbnail then hit Cmd/Ctrl+T and use the bounding box to reposition and resize the window scene.

6 Blur and tone

Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur to add a touch of blur to the outdoor scene. Hit OK. Finally, press Cmd/ Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E to merge a new layer at the top of the stack. Go to Filter>Camera Raw Filter. Use the tonal controls and sliders to finish off the image.