Tips/tutorials on blending image cutouts?

[Ryan_M...@adobeforums.com]

Anytime I try to cutout a piece of an image and paste it into another image, the final result always turns out bad. It looks exactly like what it is...a cutout pasted onto another image.

Are there any good tips or tutorials on what to do to an image cutout to make it blend more seamlessly into another image?

Thanks.

-Goalie35

[curt_...@adobeforums.com]

There is no easy way, but you can make life easier if the lighting, contrast, and direction of light, and angle of shot are similar in both pictures. At the margins I try to selective erase with a soft low transparency brush to blend it in.

[John Joslin]

Feather your selections slightly.

[CR_Hen...@adobeforums.com]

There are tutorials on the web. Just type 'Photoshop compositing tutorial' into your internet search bar.

You could also just pick up a copy of Katrin Eismann's Photoshop Masking & Compositing:

<http://www.amazon.com/Photoshop-Masking-Compositing-VOICES-Eismann/dp/tags-on-product/0735712794>

[George...@adobeforums.com]

When all else fails and the cutout is still obvious, blur its edge via a blurred duplicate layer with layer mask filled with black, on which you paint with white along the edge using a small soft brush. Your controls are the extent of blurring and the paint brush diameter, hardness, and opacity. Frequently but not always satisfactory.

[KatW...@adobeforums.com]

in CS3 one great improvement was REFINE EDGE (top bar)
which puts all the feather and contract or expand for selections into one
interface which you can choose to view on light or dark background

I love it
in older versions I used to contract the selection a bit then run a feather
of a few pixels (depends on the resolution how much)
check the mask view and back again

if you change the selection to a mask you can run a gaussian blur on the
mask to make softer edges

almost all really good blends will require a bit of brush work on the mask
in certain areas