Tutorial: Blending Photos into the Background

One of my new favorite things to do blend photos into the background.  It is a great way to put another photo on a page and it is also good for photos that are not the best quality.  Here is one way I blend photos into the background.  I’ll share my other techniques later.

1.  Scrap your layout as usual.  Here I have scrapped with a WM [squared] Designs template and there is this great blank space on the left hand side.

2. Take the photo you want to blend and drag in onto the layout directly above the background photo.  Here I have enlarge the photo to fit the length of the page. 

3.  Go over to your layers Palette and change the Blending mode.  Here I have used Soft Light, but experiment with other styles.  I have used Overlay, Multiply, Pin Light and Color Burn depending on the effect I want.

4.  If you have the capability, go to the bottom on your Layers Palette and hit the rectangle with the white circle in it (Create Layer Mask) to create a Layer Mask.  If you don’t have this capability, skip this step.

5.  If you are using a Layer Mask, select the Brush Tool and select a large soft round brush with a lower opacity.  If you’re not using a Layer Mask, select the Eraser Tool instead.  The only difference is that a Layer Mask is non-destructive, meaning I can brush back over it if I take too much off. My brush is 267px, 0% Hardness and initially 35%, which I later upped to 55%.

6. Make sure that your Colors are Black and White.  So if they are anything else, hit D to get them back to the default or if you are like mine with white on top and black on the bottom, hit X to switch them.

7.  Brush or erase the parts of the photo you don’t want to blend it away.  Here, I don’t want the darker colors of the bookcase in the back so I have erased that completely so just Carrie is left.  Continue to erase until you like the result.  If using a Layer Mask and you brush too much away, just switch to a white brush and brush it back on.

And here is my completed page (which is also a super sneak peek of this week’s release!)

Some quick tips:

• Solids are the easiest to blend against but if you use a pattern you can always brush on a solid color underneath the photo later to keep the pattern from “bleeding through”.
• Photos with strong colors as opposed to pastels blend better.
• Lighter papers are easier to blend onto rather than really dark papers.
• Just experiment and have some fun!

And finally, I have some templates that have some gradient blends already built into them and I will have them on sale 25% off with this coupon code:  blend_in11 through Saturday.