Creating Montages – putting one photo into anoth

[Gidders]

As with most things when you get into digital image manipulation there are more than one ways of getting similar results, often it’s a matter of personal choice.

One way is the equivalent to sandwiching two slides together, or the effect that you get AV when one slide fades into another and you get a “third” image as the combination of the two. I’m going assume that you are using Photos shop but much the same goes for Elements, or Paint Shop Pro

1. Open both images & resize so they are both the same dimensions

2. Select one &

• either select all (Ctrl A) & copy (Ctrl C) and the select the other and paste (Ctrl V)

• or chose the move tool from your tool box and drag one image onto the other

3. Align the top image so it completely covers the bottom image.

4. To make the bottom image show through you then need to fade the top image. Go to the layers palate (from the Window menu if its not already open) and reduce the opacity of the top layer until you get the effect you want.
http://www.our-space.pwp.blueyonder....ers-palate.jpg

The final result should be something like thisCorn-Field3352.jpg


The second option is the one usually used and that is to “cut out” part of one image and paste it into the second.

1. Open the image that contains the element that you wish to cut out

2. Next you need to “select” the bit(s) you want. To describe all the ways of doing this would take a book in itself. The tools that you can use include lasso (in all its variants), pen tool (I’ve never really got to grips with this method), magic wand, colour range, painting in quick mask mode, extract command, using the channel with the greatest contrast and I’m sure there are others. Probably the easiest to start with, particularly with objects with clearly defined edges, is the lasso tool.

3. In my example I want to change the background behind the car to make the shot a bit more dramatic (I want using it to advertise the car for sale). With the lasso tool in polygonal mode traced clicked round the roof of the car and out & up round the sides on the image.Marching-ants-sky.jpg

4. To then select the car and ground from the Select menu Select inverse (Shift Ctrl I)

5. Next as objects never have hard edges, no matter how sharp the image, (look at one closely under high magnification and you will see some blurring on the pixels) we need to soften the edge of the selection. From the Select menu, Feather (Crtl Alt D) and choose a radius on 1 or 2 pixels.

6. Now the object is ready to be pasted into the target background as in step 2 two above. This time we do not need to change the opacity because we do not want to see the background through the car.

And here the final resultMondeo-006a.jpg

So there you have it. Montages are a whole subject in themselves and I would recommend reading up on selection techniques as this is the key to good montages, especially with difficult shapes to cut out. I’ve found Dummies Guides very good for learning the basics on most subjects, and I use to have DG to Photoshop 4 a long time ago. For more advanced techniques I can recommend Martin Evening’s book PhotoShop for Photographers which has a good chapter on montages.

Have fun!

[jimtfoto]

Nice work ... and good pointers. However, one little niggle ... the original background is still visible through the car windows in the finished shot. Perhaps darkening the windows, to give them a heavily-tinted appearance, would take care of this.

cheers,
jim

[postcardcv]

very useful info - nicely laid out, very simple to follow.

The second method is the one I was playing around with when I made my geese flying past the moon shot.

[Gidders]

Jim

You’re right, and I think that points to one of the challenges of making good montages and that is disguising the fact that it is a montage. Other things that can give the game away are the direction of the light, the exposure, the quality (colour temperature) of the light, the scale of the imported object etc etc

I have another version using the original background but with some Render > Clouds in the sky and a dose of motion blur on the background, and radial blur on the wheels to make it look as though its moving….

...but there’s no one in the driving seat – spooky!

[saluki]

For more control when blending images together try using a 'layer mask' (open layers pallet and click on the add layer mask icon at the bottom), set your colours to the default black and white then experiment with the gradient tool. Alternatively, use the eraser tool and alter the opacity settings. These methods will allow you to alter the opacity of areas of an image rather than the whole image.

saluki