Photoshop tips for the amatuer

[Philip Jensen]

Ok you guys, how about helping some of us lurkers with some photoshop tips. I realize a big part is finding the right victim. I don't see much problem with the horn itself, it just needs to be rotated appropriately. What are the tricks you've discovered for merging the two together? Theres a zillion ways to paste layers in Photoshop. What tool do you use to remove, say a gun for example, from the victimes hands.

I'm not looking for a complet A -Z description, just some of the more useful things you've figured out.

Thanks a bunch!

[docpugh]

For separating out the hand and arm (and leave out stuff like the gun in James Bond's hand), I use the polygonal lasso and then layer via copy. You can also polygonal lasso an adjacent area, layer via copy, then move it to cover what you want left out. I hope this helps. Good luck!

[Leland]

That's pretty much about it. You shouldn't need to remove much of anything from the original picture. You could paint over it, or use the clone tool to blend it into the background.

[CJ Krause]

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[Jeff Miller]

One suggestion that i'd make is subtle but helps a lot to make an image seem "realer".

When pasting together different images, I zoom the things up to 1600x and go over all the foreign image edges with the smudge tool from both sides. This breaks up the continuity of border that the eye will latch onto. This is particularly good for outlines of hair and brightly reflective objects like tubas.

Jeff Miller