Adding a person to a group shot in Photoshop.

This year I had three different sessions for a company called The Camden Group.  The Camden Group needed group shots of their Senior VPs and VPs.  The problem was that not everyone was able to be present for the main group session.  I had to go back and photograph individual SVPs and VPs to then later insert them into the group shot.  As you can imagine, this posed a question:  “How can we combine the photos to incorporate everyone into one image?”  Thanks to Photoshop, there is a relatively simple way to do this.

In this case, there are five SVPs and we needed to add an image of Becki, into the middle of this image.

Becki, photographed on a different day.

The way the final image below was accomplished:

I opened both images above.

I dragged Becki’s image into the group image, using the move tool.

I made sure that she is in perspective by decreasing her layer opacity (now on top) to 50% .  This way I could see the image below and I was able to line up the lines on the wall to make sure she is the correct height compared to the guys next to her.  In a sense I “resised” her using the free transform tool.

Next I changed Becki’s opacity back to 100% and added a layer mask to her layer, by clicking on “add adjustment layer” at the bottom of the layers panel.

The layer mask is the button that looks like a square with a circle in the middle.

Next I chose the brush tool and clicked on the color black.

Black erases anything on your layer mask, as opposed to white, which adds to the layer mask.  By using the black brush tool, with the layer mask selected on Becki’s layer, I brushed away the rest of the image and was left with only Becki.

This is the relatively easy part.

Next, I spent another hour refining my mask by meticulously and very carefully “brushing in ” and “brushing out” edges where Becki touches all three men.  For the most part, I set my brush to “hard” rather than “soft”.

Blending in hair poses a particular challenge.  That’s where I set my brush to a softer mode and go back and forth between the black and white brush until it looks natural.

The final image!

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