Tuesday Tips & Pics - Swapping Heads Tutorial
Monday, June 25, 2012
I'm sure a lot of you know how to do this already, but if not, it can be an extremely handy tool. I find the "swapping heads" technique especially handy when shooting families. It's so hard sometimes to get everyone looking at the camera and smiling.
Here's one shot I grabbed this weekend while doing from my friend's sisters family. You may recognize the kiddos from a shoot I did of them a couple months ago. This time, their mama Julie, wanted some family pics as well. I was so excited to get this shot and see that both kids were actually looking at the camera! But I knew Julie wouldn't love her smile in this.
So I grabbed this picture where I liked Julie's smile better but the kids' faces weren't as good.
So I used the selection tool to draw a square around Julie's head and copied it and pasted it onto the first photo.
I lowered the opacity of the layer so I could line it up perfectly and size it just right and then I put it back at 100%. I added a layer mask by hitting the button the yellow arrow is pointing at below and then painted on the layer mask with a black brush around the edges.
If I mess up, all I have to do is switch back to the white brush and go back over it again. When I was done, I flattened, and did my final edits, and here was my result!
And here's the before and after:
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22 comments:
nice pics! :) thanks for hosting!
That is very clever Jaymi :) And could be very fun...hmm! Thanks for hosting, I hope you have a great week :)
Thanks for hosting today and for the great photo shop tip.
Rose
Nice tip. Thanks for sharing!=)
Great job on the head swap! Such a useful technique.
That still amazes me! Gorgeous capture, Jaymi.
Very nice tutorial! I am toying with buying photoshop and this could be a plus!
Nice tips!
Great shot! I know I wrote down the "how-to's" a really long time ago before I even had PS with the anticipation that I would be using it soon & need to put this trick in to play. Only thing is when you have never used PS it doesn't click when reading how-to's until you understand the program. So how that PS makes a whole lot more sense now that I have been using it for a long while- I still have only tried this technique once with less than great results. However you explain it so well that it seems simple enough- so maybe I will give it another try. Now I am off to find a pic I normally would have tossed.
This is a very cool trick! It will definitely come in handy. I'm definitely going to pin it! Thanks!
Great pictures!! Love this blog, New follower here!
Nicely done. I love seeing how people edit. Love the gorgeous flowers too.
picture perfect! good job noticing that mom wouldn't like how she looked there, despite everyone else.
It looks great! Wonderful job.
Really nice, delicious process, a very happy family.
Great edit! I'm a huge fan of the head swap, I once did a photo of my SIL's very large family and it took half a dozen different photos to make up one shot where everyone was looking/smiling at the camera! Her in law's had it blown up on a massive canvas so luckily I did a good job blending it all together haha!
Great tips, Jaymi! I've yet to master the head swap! lol
Very nicely done! But I thought this was supposed to be a secret ;)
Wow...I'd love to learn how to do this!! Hmmm, can I do it with elements?
Love your work♥
I really like this tip, but have yet to try it. Very handy though!
Nice edit!
=)
Yes! Thank you. I need this. Pinning! Hope you don't' mind ;)
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