Change the background of a Photo using Photoshop

By Siva - 17 May 2011 - No Comments

Learn how to change the background of a photo to something interesting. There are many ways to getting this way, but this technique is probably one of the easiest and most effective. So once you open two similar photos (same size) that you would like to combine in Photoshop:

we are going to combine these two photos:

1. Open two photos in Photoshop, Select one photo then

2. Select the all (Select>All), Copy the whole photo (Edit>Copy), and then working with the photo that has the foreground that you want to use, Paste the previous photo onto a new layer (Edit>Paste). Your layers menu for the for your photo should now look similar to the picture to the left. With the background photo on top of the foreground photo.

3. Now, add a Layer Mask to the upper layer that Hides All, (Layer>Add Layer Mask>Hide All). Your Layers menu should now look like similar to the picture below.

4. Click on the Brush Tool,

5. Make sure the colors you are working with are black and white.

6. Then (with the mask on the upper layer selected) simply brush where you want the new background to show through. You will probably have to change brush sizes often for the more intricate places.