Making One Picture from Two

I shot some random seagulls in a parking lot. The background was awful , but the birds stood still. A year later, I shot a Canadian Navy ship in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Nice picture, but needs something. Maybe that seagull. So, let's put him there. (The gull and the ship are available for download at the usual source, if you would like to work along. Look for gull.jpg and ship.jpg .) Figure 20.2 shows the gull.

Figure 20.2. Just one gull

Select and copy the gull, then open the ship picture and paste the bird in. Figure 20.3 shows the gull after this step.

Figure 20.3. It's "Gull"iath!!! We'll have to scale him down to size .

After reducing him down to a more realistic size, using Edit Transform Scale, he still doesnt look natural, but there are a few tricks that should help. First, put a drop shadow on the gull. The sun is coming from his left side, so the shadow has to be to the right. Figure 20.4 shows the Layer Style/Drop Shadow dialog box. Notice the settings, particularly the Distance. This controls the amount of offset and places the shadow under the gull, as it ought to be. Instead of using a black shadow, I've set the shadow color to match the darker parts of the piling he's standing on. That will also help the shadows match.

Figure 20.4. The drop shadow must come from the same direction as other shadows in the picture.

There's no way to determine which settings to use, other than trying them to see what works best. The only one I could set arbitrarily was the angle. That's because I knew where the light was, and shadows are usually directly opposite the light source. Setting the other parameters gives you a chance to play with the shadow, to make it harder or softer, bigger or smaller.

Finally, a tiny bit of dodging on the gull's back and burning on his face to bring out the detail will help a lot. Figure 20.5 shows the finished photo. Notice how adding the gull helps you see how big the ship really is.

Figure 20.5. He looks more real when he casts a shadow.

Controlling Transparency in Overlaid Images

It's extremely simple to paste one opaque image over another oneyou just do it. Transparent images are harder to work with, although Photoshop makes it a little easier by giving you opacity controls.

When you're creating a multilayered picture, as in Figure 20.5, you have two ways to control the way the layers blend. One is the Opacity slider in the Layers palette. You can set any degree of opacity, from 100% all the way down to zero, at which point whatever's on the layer has completely disappeared. You can also control the effect by using the Blending Mode menu, also in the Layers palette. By applying different modes to different layers , you can control the way each layer overlays the others.