Seamless Blending in photoshop 6

talk design
1

Hello

I have an image on one layer and have a white background on another. I have put my image over the white background. The thing is that my image looks very square and i want to make it so that the edges of the image blend in with the white background so that it looks like the image appears from nowhere. Any help would b much appreciated.

Thank You

2

Do you know anything about layer masks? A quick and easy way of accomplishing that. You could also choose a larger, soft edged brush…use the erase tool and set the opacity to like 20% then you can click out away from the edges and it will slowly erase the edges causing a blend…Personally, Layer masks are your best bet.

3

I only just started playing with photoshop, but u could use the eraser tool and change the brush to one of the soft round types. Then go around the corners of ur images and it blends into the background. There a probably better ways i dont know :rambo:

4

Thanks for your replies. I have tried the eraser tool and it looks a bit better but not the way i want it. Could you explain about the Layer Masks please? Im a bit a noobie at this so please could u make it step by step?

Thank You

5

http://www.grafx-design.com/12photo.html
This shows how to do a quick mask.

a mask is somthing you want to apply to a layer when you want to ‘cut out’ bits of the layer without loosing the original image.
Say for example you had a picture of a building, but you wanted to remove the sky - you would apply a layer mask to the sky. This would ‘Hide’ the sky from your image, with out loosing any data from the original layer.

um, hope that helps. There are some great tutorials out there, this is just one i pulled up quickly to give you an idea about masks. If you are serious aboutdeveloping your photoshop skills, i would strongly recommend getting some digital arts magazines - most usually have tutorials and sample files to teach you basic photoshop skills.

6

http://www.jessesgallery.com/tuts/photoshop/blending.pdf
Try that out. I would explain but im slammed at work right now. That will give you a basic idea along with a visual…

7

Thanks again everyone

I have tried the layer mask thing but it still doesnt seem to do what i want it do. The tutorial with the stitches didnt seem to work properly for my task and the other tutorial just seemed to replace something with something else but still looked like a sqaure picture with hard edging. Its hard for me to explain what i mean by blending so maybe its not the right word. Has anyone seen the cover for the film Scream and Hollow Man? How the white faces seem to appear from a white background. The main detail is there but the edging of the face and that are not and look like the have just appeared like a ghost. Thats the kinda affect i want. So that u can see the middle of my picture where the main detail is and all the edging is invisible and jus blends with the white background so u cant tell whether the original image was a sqaure type or rectangle or whatever.

Hope this helps

Thank You

8

try the radial gradient, set both ends of the gradient to white, then change the opacity on one end to 0 and just drag from the middle of your image to the edge of what you want blended it will fade from the middle out. it might not work right the first time, you have to get the length of the gradient right. its also not the best way but it is probably the easiest.

9

Ok my friend, here’s your solution.

If you have a solid white background layer.

Now you have a second layer on top of that with an image that only takes up half of the background, giving you this ugly square photo on a white background…

but we wanna blend

we wanna bleeeennnnnddddd

So here’s what you do…

Select the layer with the photo (layer 2) or whatever its named

look at the bottom of the layers window for a grey square with a white circle in it…this is the mask button…

press it

you are now on a masking layer…this layer masks or only reveals part of the layer it is applied to, in this case the photo layer

change your paint bucket tool to the gradient, the normal side to side gradient…make sure that the gradient you are using is the one that is transparent on one end fading to black…

now practice using the gradient tool, you will notice depending on how you drag it certain portions of the photo are revealed…

after you drag it once, you can go back and select “overlay” from the layer options for the bucket…the bucket’s layer options are at the top…do not confuse this with the layer options for the actual layer window…

you can use the gradient in this overlay mode to add more and more masking effects to the photo…

practice with that…

if you need any more help or examples post up or pm me…im at work so my examples may not come readily, but ill check back in this afternoon