Photoshop Tutorial Fooling around with layers and blending

[whyme 0]

Here come whyme again, after the popular realistic sun tutorial, i've decdied to come back witha more simplistic and easier tutorial, but nonetheless interesting. A way to merging many pictures together is a great way to display something, it looks nice, witha sense of unity as well, however, learning how to "merge" pictures together can be a pain in the butt. So here's a tutorial that teaches how, it's great for collages, cards, anything really,. Credit goes to apdz

 

STEP 1:

 

This tutorial will show you how to use the layer mask feature of photoshop to blend different images. I have made a 400x400px canvas and added a few random 'spawn' pictures onto it. I also made the background black. Here is how they look-

 

 

 

STEP 2:

Now select a layer and go to Layer >Add Layer Mask >Hide All. Do this for each of the layers you want to blend. I added a layer mask to all of my picture layers that i want to blend together. Now my layers look like this-

 

 

STEP 3:

Now get a nice soft brush and select the black layer mask part of the image layer. Use the paint brush and brush around where you want the immage to appear.

 

 

STEP 4:

Continue to brush the other layers.... make sure you are on the black layer mask layer when you brush around. This will make the image appear where you brush. If you do not on the black layer when you brush, the actual image will be altered !!!! For a little extra feel to your images, go to Layer >Distort >Diffuse. This will brighten the images a bit. Heres what mine looks like-

 

 

STEP 5:

You're done! this is the end result