Image Blending
Have you ever seen those pretty banners that seem to merge several images all together? Well, here's a basic tutorial involving two images that will allow you to do that yourself.
Difficulty Level: Easy
Time Required: ~ 5 minutes
First, choose the images you want to blend. If you want to test on the same images I'm using, you can find them here and here. (Images obtained directly from the web.)
Now that you have your images open in Photoshop, create an image file of the size you want. I'm using a 400x150 pixel canvas for this tutorial. Now, for the background of the image. Blends always seem to work best when you have something solid in the background, don't leave it transparent. You can use another image or even just solid colors. I'll be using a black background for this.
Since the images I'm using are very large in comparison with the canvas, they will need to be shrunk. I'm shrinking them down to about 500 pixels wide, using the Image Size menu. This may seem large, since it's still a lot bigger than the canvas, but that won't matter too much later, as I'm sure you'll see.
Now drag both of the images onto your canvas, it doesn't matter in what order or how they're layered since we'll worry about that later. You'll have something that looks like this:
Figure 1
Not very impressive, huh? Don't worry, it gets better.
Now, in your Layer palette, there is a little button that has a circle within a rectangle and mouses over as Add layer mask, like the below:
Figure 2
Select a layer and click that button, then select the other layer and click it again. You don't have to do that to the background layer.
Now comes the interesting part. Select the Gradient Tool. (Click and hold on the Paint Bucket tool to bring up a submenu, that's where you'll find the Gradient Tool.) Now, pick a gradient type to use and select the layer you wish to use it on. The radial gradient usually works best for me, and that's what I'll be using here. Make sure your settings are as follows:
Figure 3
These settings are very important, especially the gradient colors. White must be on the left and black on the right in order for your images to properly blend together. Also, make sure that the Dither and Transparency checkboxes are selected and the Reverse one is not.
Now you can place the gradients over your images to blend them. I usually work by starting from the top and dragging to the bottom, but different blends sometimes require you to give different angles to the gradient in order for it to come out nicely. And don't worry, if you don't like the way it came out just pick the layer and drag the gradient tool over it again. It will completely redo it for you. Fiddle as much as you want until you are satisfied with the way your blend looks.
Once you're happy, merge all the layers together and add any effects you might want to add to it. Me, I'm just going to use the Mystic Glow effect and some scanlines.
Here's my final product:
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