Final Image
This is the final image that we’ll be creating:
Images Used
These are the images used in this tutorial:
Different Format
For the purposes of this tutorial I’ll be explaining things in a slightly different format. I’ll be running
you through the basic steps like usual, but will also be dividing the tutorial in various headings, that
better explain my thought processes and methods.
Section 1: Composition
Step 1
Open up your pigeon photo in Photoshop. As we want our photo-manipulation to be the main area of
focus, I crop my photo down to make the pigeon central. To do this I select my rectangular marquee
tool, and click/hold and pull out from the center of my pigeon, whilst holding shift+alt. Holding shift
creates a perfect square, and holding alt ensures that where you first clicked remains the center of
your square selection.
Step 2
Before I look for a suitable second image, I must first make sure that I’m happy with my original
image. The image is very nice, so doesn’t need much work, but I wouldn’t mind giving some extra
focus on my pigeon. I zoom in using my magnifying tool, and then use my lasso selection tool to
carefully select around my pigeon. Then I copy/paste onto a new layer. This new layer then contains
only my pigeon part of the image. (You can see the contents of this layer below).
Step 3
Set this isolated pigeon layer’s blend mode to ‘hard light’ in your layer’s palette. And then reduce this
layer’s opacity to 50%. Then duplicate this layer and change the duplicates blend mode to ‘soft light’,
keeping it’s opacity at 50%. Then merge down these two layers with your original, by pressing
option+e twice if your top layer is selected. What this does is give your pigeon more contrast, and
emphasis, but without giving this same emphasis to the rest of your image – thus your pigeon stands
out more. I used only 50% opacity in my two duplicate layers as you want your image to remain
realistic and believable at all times, you don’t want to overdo anything.
Step 4
Now, my first pigeon image should allow me to select a suitable second image, in terms of
composition. Looking at my pigeon, I can see that it’s head is pretty much at a profile angle, if not
looking slightly towards me. Therefore, I must bear this in mind when looking for a second image to
manipulate with the first. I eventually find a good image, of a dog’s head, at a profile angle.
First Photo Prepared – Second Photo Selected
With my first photo looking how I want it to, and a second photo at the ready, it’s time to put the two
together!
Section 2: Merging the Two Photos (Initial Stages)
Step 5
Looking at my dog photo, I can see a lot of detailed edges due to it’s hairs sticking out. These would
be extremely difficult and time-consuming to cutout using the lasso tool or path tool, so Instead I’m
going to try to extract the dog image from it’s background using the Extract Tool.
First I duplicate my dog photo layer, so that I can retain the original below the duplicate. Then I hide
my original, and select my duplicate top layer.
I go to filter>extract and funny enough the extract window pops up. Your dog photo should be in the
center, and you should see a brush shape waiting for you. Brush carefully over the edges of your
dog, trying to include all the stray bits of hair and fur. The best way to use the extract tool is to have
half of the brush staying on the inside of the solid dogs shape, and half covering the stray hairs and
details you want to capture. You’ll be able to see all this as the extract brush is a semi-transparent
green, that will show through parts of the original image.
Once you have given your image a green highlight, look to the tools bar in the left of your extraction
window. You should see a paint bucket icon, which is your fill tool. Select this and then click on the
area you want to fill (in this case your dog inside your green border.). The fill tool should fill this area
with blue.
So to sum up, the green marks the edges you want to try and keep the detail of, whilst losing some
of the background, and the blue section marks the area you want to keep entirely. Once you’ve done
this, simply hit ‘OK’ to extract your image from it’s background.
Step 6
You’ll return to your original dog image, and see the results of the extraction. As you can see from
the image below, most of the edges were extracted nicely, but some parts of the image got a little
destroyed.
Step 7
To fix these edges we are going to start by erasing bits of stray hair that we don’t really need. I can
see sections of this particularly above and behind the dogs head, so I select a small, soft eraser
brush at around 40% and start erasing these areas.
Step 8
Now if you notice small parts of the dog’s face and the hair on his forehead are missing, as these got
extracted by mistake. For some reason the history brush wasn’t working for me, so I chose another
method to restore this areas.
First of all I made my original photo layer (not the extracted one) visible again. Then I noticed that
my dogs face did not really have many stray hairs on it, and therefore was fairly easy to select using
the lasso tool. I selected around just my dogs face, not the surrounding hair, and then copy/pasted
onto a new layer above my extracted layer. This filled in the deleted parts of the face in my extracted
layer, leaving just the forehead hair to restore. For this, I returned to my original layer again and
selected my clone stamp tool. Then I alt clicked on hair from the dog’s forehead, and returned to my
copied face layer. Then I simply brushed in the cloned hair where it had been lost on the extraction
layer.
Finally, I merged my copied face and extracted layer’s together, resulting in a fully extracted dog,
with face completely in tact.
The images below show my top face/cloned hair layer on it’s own, and then the result of merging this
with my extracted layer.
Step 9
Now I paste my extracted dog image back into my original pigeon image.
Step 10
Now we want to resize the dog’s head to fit with the pigeon’s body. To do this accurately, hide your
dog layer, and then create a new layer called ‘pigeon outline. Use a brightly colored brush (roughly
2px in size), and paint in the outline of the pigeon. Then return to your dog layer, making it visible
again, and resize it to fit the outline as best you can.
Section 3: Merging the Two Photos (Later Stages)
Step 11
Now with your dog layer selected go to image>adjustments>desaturate. This will make your dog
black and white, to match your pigeon.
Step 12
As you can see, the contrast of the dog is not matching that of the pigeon image. To try and fix this I
repeat the technique that I used on the pigeon image. I duplicate my dog image layer and set the
duplicate blend mode to ‘hard light’ and the opacity to 50%. Then I duplicate this and set the
duplicates blend mode to ‘soft light’. This is getting closer, but the shadows aren’t quite as intense as
the original pigeon image. To fix this I up the opacity of both the hard and soft light layers to 80%.
TIP: To try and match different images, try to make the darkest shadows and lightest highlights of
each image roughly match.
Step 13
Now as you can see parts of the dog image aren’t matching up with edges of the pigeon image. To
start fixing this we’ll focus first on the large area of white hair hanging down below the dog’s neck.
There is also white hair forming an unnatural border between the dog and pigeon images. Despite
having extracted the dogs fur to the best of our ability, we’re going to have to go in with the lasso tool
and cut away all of the white areas of fur manually.
Step 14
There is still too much fur covering the pigeon’s wing, so I go in with a largish eraser brush (10%
opacity, 30% hardness) and erase away most of the dog’s fur covering the pigeon’s body.
Step 15
This step is quite important in the blending process. Use your magnifying glass to zoom in to your
image. And then grab the smudge tool. Set your brush size to 1px, and set the strength to 88%. With
your dog layer selected, smudge out individual strands of hair over your pigeons body.
Section 4: Final Touches
Step 16
Now identity the light source of the original pigeon image. I can see the it is coming from the top-right
of the image to the bottom-left.
Step 17
Grab your paintbrush, and set the blending mode to ‘color dodge’. Then reduce the brush opacity to
10% and make the color white. Then make the brush size 40px. Brush over the areas of the dog’s
head that should be lit by the light source.
Step 18
Now create a new top layer called ‘color overlay’. Select your whole canvas ‘option+a’ and then
apply a gradient ranging from 373B3F to 1B1C1D. Then change your layer blend mode to ‘multiply’
and reduce it’s opacity to 10%.
And We’re Done!
I hope that you liked this tutorial. The steps are quite basic, but hopefully this can provide a start to
basic photo manipulation for Photoshop beginners.