Fading One Image Into Another

Finding Elements' hidden gradient mask

Calling all wedding photographers! Calling all wedding photographers, this technique is for you! Well, actually, it's for anybody who has ever wanted to blend two photos together using Elements.

This technique is perfect for creating collages, or rather, combining several images into one. And to those of you who have written to request this tutorial over the past several weeks, I appreciate your patience and hope this pleases you. The donate button is on the right :)

Today we'll create the effect of fading one image into another by using a layer mask. But Elements doesn't support layer masks, right? Right. However, Elements does support adjustment layers and guess what tags happily along with those things? A plump and juicy little layer mask.

But first, let's chat briefly about what the heck a layer mask is and why we'd want to use one in the first place.

What is a Layer Mask?

A Layer Mask is a method of hiding pixels. In my humble opinion, it's better to hide pixels than to delete them because one does change one's mind from time to time. As an analogy, think of a layer mask as if it were the masking tape you’d place around the window trim when painting your walls. You're not removing the trim, you're just hiding it from the paint you're about to apply. Make sense?

Why should I use one?

Using the analogy of painting your home above, rather than remove the window trim completely (yikes), wouldn’t you rather protect it with masking tape so you can do whatever you want with the walls? Of course you would. The same logic applies to your images. When you want to mess with certain portions of the image, rather than delete the unwanted bits, consider masking them off instead. This way you don’t destroy your original image, and your artwork remains flexible and you can experiment with different effects and such.

To illustrate, I'm going to combine an image from a wedding with that of a beautiful bed of roses I snatched from iStockphoto.com. By using a layer mask, I'll make it look like the couple is rising up out of the roses.

One document, two photos

Step 1: Open two photos in Elements.

Step 2: Press V to select the move tool and drag one image onto the other, as shown below. You can do this by dragging the layer itself from the layers palette and dropping it into the other document, or by clicking somewhere on the image itself and dragging it onto an open document. TIP: Hold the Shift key while you drag to perfectly center the image in the other document.

Step 3: Because I want to fade the photo the couple into the background (meaning more of the background will end up showing than anything else), it works out easier to mask the photo of us. Therefore, I dragged the background to the bottom of the layers stack.

Create the mask

Now that the images are combined in one document and properly arranged, it's time to make one fade into another.

Step 4: Click the half black/half white circle at the top of the Layers Palette and choose Levels. Immediately press OK to send the dialog away. Remember, we're only creating this adjustment layer to get at its mask.

NOTE: Make sure the adjustment layer is between the two photo layers, as shown below. See how the mask has a tiny black border around it? That means it's selected. That'll be important in a bit.

Step 5: Select the photo you wish to mask (or fade) in the Layers Palette (it'll turn light blue). Press and hold the Option key (PC: Alt) and hover your cursor over the line between that layer and the adjustment layer beneath. When the cursor turns into two intersecting circles, click to group those layers together. Alternatively, select the photo you wish to mask and press Command + G (PC: Ctrl + G).

Paint the mask

In the realm of the layer mask, painting with black hides and painting with white reveals. Gray does something in between (think partial transparency). Shades of gray is what we'll use to create our photo fade—a gradual blending of one photo into another. Since the gradient tool is made for blending two colors smoothly, it's perfect for the job.

Step 6: Press G to select the Gradient tool.

Choose your gradient

The way you want one photo to fade into another dictates which gradient tool to use.

Step 7: If I wanted to fade the bottom portion of the couple, I'd choose a linear gradient:

Step 8: Back in the layers palette, click once on the mask thumbnail to select it (a tiny black border will appear around it).

Step 9: Mouse back over to the document, and position the gradient tool crosshair towards the bottom of the photo. Drag slightly upwards and release.

This is what we get (note the layer mask shown in the Layers Palette at right below):

If you are non-plussed by your first Gradient Dragging Attempt, just do it again. As long as you still have the mask selected, you can keep dragging from different starting points, in different directions, to get just the right effect. You'll notice the farther you drag with the crosshair, the more gradual the fade will be. For example, see how little blending we get when I drag only slightly upward?

Notice how the mask changed in the layers palette? There's not much of a transition between the two photos. It's not quite a hard edge, but close.

That's all there is to it! By experimenting with the different types of gradients and by flip-flopping your color chips, you can create a variety of effects.

With white as your top color chip and by choosing a radial gradient, you can create something like this:

Again with white as the top color chip, a reflected gradient yields something like this:

A diamond gradient:

And again a linear gradient, but this time drawn diagonally (note the color switch, black is on top):

My favorite is the first one we created, as shown below. I also grabbed the Move tool, selected the top photo layer and moved it up a touch so our heads are closer to the top of the document.

Until next week, happy gradient masking!