Expert: Scott Valentine - 10/20/2008

Question
Hi Scott, I hope you can help me. I have Photoshop 7 and I want to move an image of a person onto another image with a tree in the foreground. I want to make it appear as if the person is part behind the tree and looking out from there. If I just move it now to the right location, it will just be in front of the tree. Is there a way to sort of define the line for the edge of the tree and then "slide" the new image so it is partially behind?

Answer
Thanks for your question, Jay. What you want to do is to use a mask on the tree layer. It would take more room than I have here to adequately explain this, but I'll give you some tips so you can do a good web search.

Masking is a technique where you selectively hide or show pieces of a layer. The help file in Photoshop will give you an overview of the process. For your case, you will want to create a tree-shaped mask for the layer with the person on it. Essentially, you simply create a layer mask, then paint on it to hide the areas where the person is behind the tree.

Search for "photoshop masking tutorial", and here is a free tutorial I wrote for CommunityMX.com:

http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=40311

That should give you the ideas you need to get going!

Please let me know if you have other questions or comments :)

-Scott