May 28, 2007
Here’s a neat tip from yours truly on my method of superimposing. This post specifically covers superimposing your face on top of another, but it lays out the basics of superimposing virtually anything you can imagine as the sky is the limit when working with Photoshop.
Lately on Facebook, I’ve been having a little bit of fun with my profile pictures. Instead of using something like a self-portrait, or God forbid, a “myspace angle“, I’ve superimposed my face on top of famous movie characters.
From the before/after image above, you should get a pretty good idea of what this post is about now if you didn’t fully understand what I meant by superimposing before. If you’re looking to improve your skills in using Photoshop, have a little fun, or produce a humorous profile picture for your preferred IM app/social networking site, read on.
(Note: This tutorial requires Photoshop CS+)
First, find a picture of something you’d like to superimpose your face on. I like to use screen captures from movies, movie posters and the like. Let’s start my example with the latest superimposition I’ve done, the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest movie poster.- Next, we need a picture of your face which fits the angle of the face you would like to replace. I chose to replace Johnny Depp’s face, so I took a snapshot of myself looking in the same direction he was. The angle is really important, so try your best to get the angle to look the same. To do this step, a digital camera will suffice, but if you have a Mac with an iSight, Photo Booth is really great for this.
- Open up your self-portrait in Photoshop, and duplicate the Background layer so you essentially have 2 layers of your self portrait.
Why have duplicate layers? We’re going to be altering one of them and having an untouched version is nice just in case you screw up.
- Next, create a new layer in between those two and make it a neon bright color such as cyan or magic pink.
- There are probably a ton of ways that you can go about superimposing, but this is probably where most methods differ. Here, I make use of the Extract tool which I never learned how to use until after about 7 years of using Photoshop. It was at this time that I came across a tutorial by Bert Monroy which covered it and now it’s one of my most favorite tools.
Why not use the pen tool or marquee tool to cut out our face from our self-portrait? The Extract tool will “softly” cut it out and it’s a lot quicker too. In the end, it allows for better blending and awesome results.
Now, to actually using this tool…
Select the “Background copy” layer, then from the Photoshop menu, go to:
Filter > Extract
You should now be presented with a separate window with your selected layer. By default, the highlighting tool should be selected (the icon looks like a felt marker). If not, select it at the left of this window.
Now, trace around your face that you would like to extract as shown below.
- Photoshop still needs to know whether you want to select inside your tracing, or outside of your tracing. Select the paint bucket tool from the left, and fill inside your tracing as shown below.
- Now press “OK” to the right and you should have the following result:
It might look like the result is rough around the edges, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing (it only looks bad because of the bright contrasting background behind it).
- Open your movie poster from step 1 into Photoshop and take your face you just extracted and drag and drop it into the movie poster.
Obviously, my picture is not to scale as it should be. This can easily be fixed by Free Transforming the layer with your face.
For those who haven’t discovered this tool yet, right click anywhere inside the window, and click on “Free Transform” from the contextual menu. Once you activate Free Transform, you should see a boundary box around the layer with your face. Just treat it like you’re resizing a window (you’re what you call “scaling” here), and resize it to fit the face you want to replace. In this case, we need to make it smaller so it covers up Johnny Depp’s face, but not leave it too large either.
- After cleaning up our layer by erasing some of the rough edges which stick out. We’re pretty much finished with out task of superimposing.
In the above image, you might notice that my face is a little bit more yellower than the original self-portrait. This is to make it so my face blends in better with the overall image as the movie poster has an underlying yellow tone. You can try the built in “Match Color” feature of Photoshop, or do manual hue adjustments.
Stay tuned for next time on how to add in the little details to make your face blend in better (eg. beard, makeup), and how to make it look like you were casted, instead of Johnny Depp:
I love ‘em, saw your pirates one and several others you posted on facebook if I’m not mistaken. Awesome work, I wish I was a pirate *hehe*
Thanks for the comment buddy, doesn’t everyone wish they were a pirate?
Maybe for my next profile picture on facebook, I should do one related to a ninja…
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Very cool. I’ve been trying to get this right for some time. Thanks for the tutorial…
how do you drag your photo onto the poster?
tom – To perform a drag and drop in photoshop, it requires that there are 2 separate documents open. In this case, you should have your photo open, and the movie poster image open in another document. Then with the move tool, drag and drop your photo into the movie poster.
thanks, but when i right click in the window it only comes up with
Background
Select Similar Layers
help. .
is it possible to do this with photoshop v7???
@tom: I’m sorry, unfortunately I don’t think I can explain how to do that procedure anymore clearer than I did on my last attempt without demonstrating it. It’s a really simple thing to do in photoshop bringing one layer to another document, so if you know someone who’s used Photoshop more extensively than you have, they’ll be able to show you how to do it in a matter of seconds.
@shiv: Technically you can do this in Photoshop 7. I’m not sure if the Extract feature is there, but you can “cut out” your face using a method that’s been in use until the Extract tool came out – eraser tool. Other than that step, everything else you should be able to do using version 7.
What settings did you use and what function for coloring your face yellower.
Also how did you line it up so well with the bandana.
Dylan, you can read more on how I adjusted my skin tone and more in part two of this article.
thanks for the tips… have had photo shop for some time and never utilized it due to the computer illiterate that i am. my dad is turning 80 and we are looking to do some crazy things with his pictures… thanks again… betty
Thanks for the tutorial. The cutting part you described great but merging the two you left up to guesswork and left me more confused than when I started.
Hello ,
Just recently discovered CS3 , am in networking (Cisco) and looking for a career change. Thanks for the great tutorials !!! Its an amazing piece of software !! I am glued to the endless possibilities.
I loved this example it looks like it will really help. Which version of Photoshop CS did you use 2 or 3. I would like to know which one you suggest to buy. Thanks
Craig, I used CS3 for this example and I’m not too sure if CS2 will have some of the tools I used. CS4 was actually just released and I’d recommend going with CS4 as being up-to-date is the best. Even though the base functionality across CS-CS4 is probably the same, there are extra features which can come in handy that you might kick yourself later for if you decide to go with an earlier version.
Hi there, wondering where you got the movie poster. Is there a place where they can be downloaded/purchased as a jpeg etc.?
Allen: I found the movie poster via Google Image so you should probably have similar luck searching with the same method.
This was very helpful, thanks
Apart from one thing…my photoshop doesn’t seem to have the ‘free transform’ tool and so I don’t know how to make the face smaller so that it fits
An alternative way then would be to try and resize your face in a separate image document (via Image > Image Size) and then drag it back to your project. It will take some trial and error though because unless you’re lucky, you probably won’t resize it so it’s proportion to everything else the first time.
You have done an excellent job of describing this… Thanks
Thank you! This was really easy to follow along with, and I had fun using it actually
>.> I put some-ones face on a cow O.O
In good fun I promise >.< xD
Thank you so much Sam. I’ve had Photoshop Elements for 4 years now and have only used it to store photo’s to date! I just superimposed a photo of my friends face onto an emu and your instructions made it so clear that I was able to do it at 11pm after being up all night with my baby the night before!!
Thanks again,
Corinne
x
thanx man…it just worked so perfectly..but one question..cutting with that highlighter needs pretty much control on the mouse..is there any easier tool to perform that task?
If you have Photoshop CS3+ there’s a new tool called quick selection which you should check out. It’s a little more easier for working with a mouse.
Wow, that´s great! I love it!!!!
Yes google image search is great for finding all kinds of images
One great site for movie covers is
http://www.cdcovers.cc/
good tutorial, thanks
i can’t match the color & can’t blend the layer with the background.how could i ? plz tell……..