Pasting an image into a masked area

[John Hilgenberg]

There must be a way to do this . . .

Image 1 is a landscape with a pale sky. Image 2 is a beautiful blue sky with clouds.

In image 1 I have selected the pale sky with the magic wand. Now I want to paste in the pretty sky from image 2, into just the area selected within image 1. I have tried creating a separate layer for the target area, but that doesn't get me anywhere. I can't figure out how to limit the paste to the selected area. Can anyone tell me the trick?

John Hilgenberg

[Chuck Snyder]

Mac, yes, Paste Into is an option in Elements as well. Haven't tried it
before; sounds like it may be an approach to John H.'s challenge.

Chuck

[Mac McDougald]

Doesn't PE have "paste into" like PhotoShop?

(I'm out of town without PE on this laptop).

Mac

[Chuck Snyder]

John, here's one way to do it, assuming the two pictures are of the same
size (pixel dimensions).

1. Open the sky picture in Elements.
2. Open the landscape picture. With the landscape picture active, do a
Select>All and Edit>Copy.
3. Click on the sky picture and do an Edit>Paste. You'll now have two
layers in the original sky picture; do a Save As and rename it the image.
Close the original sky picture.
4. From the layers palette, click on the landscape (upper) layer. Use the
Magic Wand to select the pale sky in the landscape layer as you did before.
Once it's selected, do a Select>Feather of about 5 pixels to make the
transition softer.
5. With the selection still on (marching ants visible) do an Edit>Clear.
The sky from below should be visible.

As I said, it's one of many ways to accomplish the mission!

Chuck

[Grant Dixon]

Chuck

Good one and you beat me to my post. While I do my differently the result is the same.
Seems there is more than one way to skin a pixel. This is a testament to the depth of
Elements. I won't post mine as not to cloud the issue....sorry bad pun.

Grant