Uncover the methods to effectively blend layers in Adobe Photoshop with this detailed article. Learn various techniques to add and adjust images in a Photoshop file, transforming the images to match your background, and preparing them for blending.
Key Insights
- The article discusses three ways to add images into a Photoshop file: dragging an image from the File Explorer, using the 'Place Embedded' option from the File menu, and opening an image directly from the File menu.
- Transforming the image is vital in ensuring it matches the dimensions of your background image. This can be done through the 'Free Transform' option under the Edit menu. This powerful tool allows you to scale, rotate, and resize the image using your mouse within the interface.
- Before starting the blending process, it's crucial to properly adjust all the images over the background. This includes changing the visibility of layers and ensuring that all images are appropriately sized.
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In this video, we'll be working on blending layers. Let's begin by opening up our image.
We'll open the Man on Mountain.jpeg**. As always, the first thing that we'll want to do is create a new layer and retitle it Man on Mountain Adjusted**, and finally, we'll rename our background image Man on Mountain Original**, and lock the original. Next, let's begin adding additional images into this Photoshop file so we can begin blending them together.
There are a couple of ways that we can add images to this file. The first—and potentially easiest—way is to open up our File Explorer**, and from here, we can simply select the image that we want and drag it into our Photoshop file. Let's select the Wall Texture.jpeg and simply drag it into our Photoshop file.
As you can see, we now have Wall Texture as a layer within our file. Let's drag it above Man on Mountain Adjusted so we can see what it looks like. Next, let's add two more images into this file.
Another way that we can add images is to go to File in our menu bar and click Place Embedded**. This means that we're placing an embedded image within the Photoshop file. For our embedded image, we're going to select the Sand Texture.jpeg and click Place**.
Here, we can see that we have another one titled Sand Texture as a layer in our file. Finally, the last way to add images is we'll go to File > Open**, and unfortunately, Open is grayed out, meaning that we've missed a step and we still have to work on our file before we have this available to us. We can see the frame around Sand Texture**, meaning that it wants to make sure that we have the correct size for this image.
We'll click back on Sand Texture and simply hit ENTER**. We can now go to File > Open**, and open our next image. If you ever notice that some of the options are grayed out, that often means that you haven't quite completed the steps necessary within Photoshop to be able to move on to those options.
So look back at your interface and see if there's something that's attracting your attention that you need to resolve first. As we select our third and final image, we're going to be selecting the Paint Texture.jpeg and click Open**. As we've done this before, we can see that our Paint Texture opens as another Photoshop file.
The easiest way to add this to our previous Man on Mountain.jpeg file is to click on the layer and simply click and hover over the Man on Mountain file and release the mouse in the file. Now we can see that it's titled Layer 1 in our file. Let's rename it Paint and hit ENTER**.
Now you can see that we have four images stacked on top of each other within our Photoshop file. This seems like a good time to save. Let's hit CTRL + S on the keyboard, and we'll save it as a Photoshop file with the word Adjusted**.
And hit ENTER and OK**. Now let's begin blending these layers. Let's first start by changing the visibility of our Paint and our Sand Texture so we can work with one layer at a time.
Currently, we have the Wall Texture on top of the Man on Mountain**. If we make this invisible, we can see that the Wall Texture is on top. The first thing that we'll want to do is transform this image so it has the same dimensions as our Man on Mountain background image.
We can do this by transforming the image under Edit > Transform**, and here you'll see that we have different options for how we can transform the image. In addition to transforming these—such as adjusting our scale or rotating it—we can simply go to Free Transform**, or use CTRL + T on the keyboard. Free Transform is a powerful option that allows us to transform our image with the mouse in the interface.
Therefore, the easiest way is to simply start clicking and dragging corners to their desired location. If we click on the corners or the sides and begin dragging, we'll see that we change the overall size of the image, but we don't distort it by changing the width and height in different ratios. Photoshop will automatically try and preserve the ratios of width and height so you don't get the distortion.
However, if we do want to distort it, we can simply hold Shift**, and it will only move in the way that we want it to. I'll release Shift to preserve the dimensions, and I'll simply resize the image so that it takes up the entire canvas. Next, let's begin resizing our other images.
We can resize Sand Texture by first making it visible and clicking on the layer Sand Texture**. Let's hit CTRL + T on our keyboard so that we can begin transforming. We could transform this to match the same dimensions left and right, or the other thing that we could do is simply rotate the image.
The way to rotate it is to go to one of the corners, and we'll see that we have a new cursor with arrows on the edge of what looks like a corner. This shows that now if we click and move our cursor, it will rotate the image. In addition, if we want a rotation at certain increments, we can hold Shift on our keyboard and simply drag our cursor until we have a perfect 90-degree angle.
We'll release, and then we'll drag to the corners so that we fill our entire canvas. Finally, let's do this with Paint**. We'll make the layer visible, and we'll hit CTRL + T on the keyboard.
The first thing that we'll notice is this is a very large photo. So, we'll simply drag it to the left and make sure that it fits our canvas, and we'll hit ENTER**. Next, let's make the Sand Texture and Paint invisible so that all we see is our Wall Texture**, with the Man on Mountain Adjusted below it.
Now that we're prepared with all three images appropriately sized on top of Man on Mountain**, we're ready to begin blending. Let's save our file using CTRL + S on the keyboard, and in the next video, we'll begin blending these layers on top. See you there!