How To Fade Two Images Together In Photoshop

If you've ever wanted to learn how to merge ii images in Photoshop, this guide will bear witness you lot 3 fairly elementary and fundamental techniques you tin apply to combine images creatively.

Every bit with almost tasks in Adobe Photoshop, there are several ways to reach the same outcome. Some of these will fit your specific needs better than others, so experiment a bit and run across what works best for the final artistic result you want.

Information technology's besides possible to combine two or more of the options below together to create a more than complex photo composition. We actually explicate how to do a basic version of this for methods 2 and 3 below. (You tin also tape the steps to make an Action similar these.)

Too notation that the following techniques have been bundled in order of difficulty from more circuitous (and powerful) downwardly to the simplest, though the basic photograph joining steps described in Method 1 (Layer Masks) apply to all iii photo merging options.

Alternatively, if you don't have the time or inclination to use Photoshop on your desktop, at that place are too phone app options available for both Android and iPhone that let y'all to do a quick creative blending of two photos.

Method 1: Use a Layer Mask

How to guide tutorials for how to merge images in Photoshop. To start things off, let'south look at Layer Mask. This is probably the nearly versatile and popular method of merging two images in Photoshop. It also comes with the benefit of letting you manipulate exactly how and where 2 images alloy together.

With the other 2 techniques we're going to comprehend below, this last fox isn't quite as easy.

You tin can really practise a ton of stuff with Layer Mask, and to cover all of it would mean a whole separate tutorial but for this specific method, then here we'll focus on the essentials for understanding this process hands.

Layer Masks basically control the transparency of a layer, but with one very useful twist: instead of a whole layer beingness given a certain level of transparency, the Layer Masks method lets you apply it at different levels beyond different parts of an overlaying (layered) epitome.

This is done past using black and white gradients. If yous fill part of an overlying layer with white, it will remain visible, and if y'all fill it with black, it will exist concealed to show the background image

Basically, you tin can use masks to hide and show parts of both superimposed images very selectively. Here's the step-by-stride process:

Stride ane: Select a background image and a peak layer image that you want to merge together. It'due south important that both images have the same size and that they both use the same color infinite pick. Open both of them in Photoshop.

Footstep two: Now that you've opened up both images, you'll see their corresponding tabs along the meridian of your Photoshop window.

To make your photos merge, all you need to do is click the Move tool on the left icon carte du jour, and click the image you want equally the overlay.

Property downwards the left mouse push button and the shift key while dragging, move it over the image that volition exist your background then release. Belongings the shift key centers the image.

How to combine images in Adobe Photoshop example

Step 3: Now you accept two layers in the aforementioned image tab and information technology'due south time to add together the Layer Mask.

You can practice this by moving down to the layer mask button at the bottom of the layers panel where your 2 epitome layers are listed on the lower right of the screen. It vaguely looks like a little camera icon (with a hollow circle in the middle of it).

Click on it and you'll see a white Layer Mask square form next to your layer image icon in the layers panel.

You now have a transparent Layer Mask betwixt your 2 pictures. You can also alter which epitome you want to employ for the overlying paradigm by clicking it and moving it up or down after unlocking whichever image was set as the default background by Photoshop.

Now, select the Gradient tool at the left of the Photoshop screen.

Create a new layer mask on your top layer

Step 4: Making sure that the blank layer mask box next to your overlay image is selected, you tin can now merge by selecting the gradient tool (on your keyboard press G for quick admission).

Before you practise this though, at the bottom left of the Photoshop screen, you'll notation 2 overlapping boxes, one white and the other blackness. You can brand white or black be at the forefront by pressing either D or X on your keyboard and switching whenever you like.

Choose the Adobe Photoshop gradient tool

Step 5: With the gradient cursor tool, simply click at the edge of whatsoever part of the overlay prototype you want to supersede with the background image, and so while all the same belongings the mouse button downwardly, drag the gradient line along until y'all've reached where you'd like the overlay image to remain, and then unclick.

Remember to make certain that your foreground box (lower left corner) color is set up to black so that the underlying image will appear as you lot play with gradient.

Hold down the mouse as you drag the gradient across the area then let go

How to combine images in Photoshop

Footstep 6: Y'all've merely mastered the basic art of using a layer mask with broad gradient shifts. To get in more precise, you can do ane more very useful affair.

Instead of using the gradient tool, select the brush tool on the left panel of Photoshop, and at the top of the screen, set the brush thickness and hardness (lower hardness means a more soft-edged brush stroke).

You may use the brush tools to paint an object into or out of your composite image

You can then use this castor tool across your overlay image to more than specifically remove parts of it and show the underlying image, or undo any mistakes by reverting to blackness with white in the foreground, (Pressing D or X to switch the 2 little boxes in the lower left corner) and re-revealing the overlay image.

Congratulations, y'all've just learned how to use Photoshop layer mask merging in two dissimilar ways.

Method ii: Use a Blend Manner

Sample image for how to combine images in photoshop

With Blend Modes, two images are layered together and you lot adjust the transparency of one or the other to brand elements from both appear as parts of the aforementioned prototype.

In other words, Alloy Modes are a broader method of merging images in Adobe Photoshop, but tin can be very useful for a quick job.

Footstep 1: Just as we described above for the first method, open 2 photos that you lot'd similar to merge.

Choose blend mode in pictures for photoshop to merge

Step ii: With both photos open, y'all can now drag ane image over the other just as nosotros instructed in method one above. Once these images are layered, y'all can change which ane you want as the overlay image just by switching around the two layers in the Layers panel (whichever one is the top layer will be your overlay).

Step 3: With your overlay image selected, yous tin can option from any one of numerous blend mode options in the Layers tab on the correct, right next to the Opacity slider. Play around with whatever of these options to see which one creates the all-time results.

You can also modify opacity for either of the 2 photos by moving the slider left to right.

Stride four: You can besides bicycle through the Photoshop blend modes with your keyboard for quicker workflow past pressing Five on your keyboard to activate the motion tool, and so holding down the Shift key while pressing the + or – keys on your computer to whorl up and down.

How much the colors show through depends on the mode you choose

Bonus step: It'southward perfectly possible to layer more than than 2 images together and adjust both Blend Modes and Opacity or Fill (see beneath) between all three of them one past i until they combine in just the right way for you to like the end result.

This is a bit more complicated because information technology means you'll accept a larger range of composition elements and objects, and you'll have to make sure they don't crowd into the complete composition. If yous desire to effort it, however, the editing procedure in Photoshop is just the aforementioned as for two pictures.

Congratulations. You've just learned how to combine images together into a new composition using this method. Now allow's move onto adjusting opacity and fill with your Blend Modes and layered images.

Method three: Use Layer Opacity

Layer Opacity options are even simpler to use than Blend Modes, and in fact, the ii can be smoothly combined to create a more than fine-tuned photograph overlay. Basically, Alloy Modes and opacity options go next as ways to combine images in Photoshop.

What Layer Opacity lets you lot do is change the opacity of the overlying layer image so that information technology's only partly visible on acme of the background image. The reason that Opacity works with Blend Modes is that the visual upshot information technology creates will vary depending on which blend mode y'all practical to the epitome layers kickoff.

Both Blend Modes and Layer Opacity crusade ane prototype to become visible over the prototype below it, but Layer Opacity increases or decreases the transparency of the overlying image. Here'southward how it's done:

Stride 1: Open up up two images in Photoshop just as we described in the steps for Layer Masks, and so bring together the images as layers in the same manner we described under our Layer Masks section above.

Altering the opacity as a way to combine images in Photoshop

Footstep 2: At present that you take your images in layers, with ane as the background and the top layer equally the 1 you want to merge over, you tin can select the summit layer past clicking on its thumbnail in the layers console and play with its opacity.

This is located just to the correct of the Alloy Modes box in the lower right panel in Photoshop, and tin be changed with a lilliputian slider that goes from 0% to 100%.

Stride 3: Yous can adjust the overall wait of your merged images by selecting dissimilar Blend Modes so playing with the opacity level while any of them is active on the layer you're editing.

Experimenting with these 2 options lets you create a composition that you're most happy with.

Steps for how to combine layers to create art

Retrieve that an image layer locked as Background tin can't be edited – you have to showtime unlock it by clicking on the padlock adjacent to its thumbnail so that it becomes just some other editing layer.

Pace 4: Right beneath the Opacity slider, you'll run into another slider for Fill. This also changes opacity only in a slightly unlike way: While Opacity creates different furnishings depending on the Blend Mode it's reacting with, Fill will modify the absolute opacity of the pixels and shapes in the overlay layer that you're editing over the background.

Change opacity and fill to combine layers

Bonus step: You can also use the Layer Mask merging process described in Method 1 to two or more than images that you've been editing with Opacity/Make full layers and Blend Modes. This mix of methods tin can be useful in creating a limerick that'southward more smoothly merged amidst multiple images.

It'due south also great for making large areas of one whole layer disappear via layer masking. You tin also add Layer Opacity that we encompass in our next step to Alloy Modes with Layer Masks.

Here'south ane example of a three-layer photo merge that I created using all 3 in a higher place methods.

You can add layer mask to refine your composition

FAQs Virtually Merging and Blending Photos in Photoshop

How exercise I merge multiple images into one in Photoshop?

In that location are several methods for merging multiple images in Photoshop. To merge multiple images, use the Layer Mask, Blend Mode, or Layer Opacity tools to command the merge function.

The Layer Opacity tool is the simplest method to merge multiple images.

How do you blend images in Photoshop?

Adobe Photoshop features a very effective Blend Mode that allows you to layer two or more images and control the opacity of each.

With the Blend Mode tool, you blend two images seamlessly to appear as a single image. The procedure is quick and unproblematic and one of the most popular methods of blending images in Photoshop.

Can you lot combine Alloy Mode with Layer Opacity?

Information technology's also possible to create a unmarried image from multiple images using a combination of Photoshop blend/merge tools.

To proceeds greater command over the subtlety of a merge, combine any or all of the Alloy Mode, Layer Mask, and Layer Opacity in Photoshop.

Final Words

The iii above photo merging techniques for combining images in Photoshop can exist used to merge images together into many dissimilar compositions.

Nosotros've covered only the essentials of understanding each of them and joining together all 3 techniques, just at that place's an enormous corporeality of room for experimentation beyond that.

In other words, now that yous empathize these fundamentals, just take fun and explore.

Grab 2 or more than images, make sure you don't relieve annihilation to the original copies, and starting time seeing what kind of new art you tin create from mixing ordinary pictures together.