step by step Merge your portraits in photoshop

once you’ve chosen your two portraits, it’s time to start adjusting and blending them in software

open in acr

Hit Select All to apply changes to both images. Grab the White Balance tool and click on a neutral colour, such as the background, to remove any blue or yellow colour casts. Fine-tune using the Temperature slider; we set ours to 5000.

position portrait

Reduce the opacity of the topmost layer to 50% and position roughly in place so the eyes line up. Press Ctrl+t to resize and rotate if required. Reset the layer opacity to 100%, then rename the respective layers ‘self-portrait’ and ‘dog’.

Merge Layers

Grab a white brush and paint on the black mask to reveal areas of the ‘dog’ layer you want to merge with the ‘self-portrait’ layer. Reduce brush opacity to help blend in areas such as the hair. Once happy, hit Ctrl+alt+shift+e to create a merged layer.

import Layer

Set Exposure to +0.30 and Shadows +10, click Open Images. To import the dog portrait onto our selfie, go to Select>select All and Edit>copy. Navigate to the self-portrait image tab and go to Edit>paste to paste as a separate layer.

Distort

With the ‘dog’ layer selected go to Filter>distort> Liquify to distort and shape the left side of the dog to fit our self-portrait head shape. Set Size to 800 and Pressure to 100. Alt-click the Mask icon to add a black mask to the ‘dog’ layer.

tone image

Add a Levels adjustment layer, set Shadows to 8, Midtones to 1.20 and Highlights to 242. Merge layers, go to Enhance>convert to Black and White and select Newspaper style. Change the Blending Mode to Soft Light. Finally, crop the image.