Intro to Photoshop Compositing for Beginners

What is Compositing?

Image compositing has a very broad and easy-to-understand definition. When you make a composite, you merge two or more photos together to create a seamless final image. This usually involves several steps to ensure that everything looks like it was all captured straight out of camera.

Why Combine Photos in Photoshop?

There are countless reasons that learning to blend photos together can help you both creatively and professionally. Whether you’re working with products, landscapes, weddings, or you just want to create stunning visual effects, the ability to merge two or more photos together will often help you solve a number of creative problems and get the most out of your images.

A Beginner’s Guide

If you’ve ever come up with an idea for a great image but weren’t sure how to capture it in camera, this tutorial can help! Compositing images in Photoshop can help turn your imagination into reality. Whether you plan to merge two images or 200, this is a great place to start.

Easily Blend Multiple Images

Compositing is one of the most challenging skills to master. It requires knowledge of countless tools within Photoshop as well as a strong understanding of how to find and capture images that will blend together well. Starting your compositing journey has never been easier with our simple approach to the basics of combining pictures in Photoshop.

From Beginner to Pro

We start with the basics, but this tutorial is designed to help artists at every level. We teach the fundamentals and expand upon it by adding in powerful tools, tips, and techniques that can take your blending to the next level.

Our Secrets to Realistic Composites

Image compositing starts with finding and capturing the right photos. We start this tutorial by helping you develop the eyes of a compositing artist, teaching you how to analyze pictures in a way that will help you determine how well they will fit together. Learn the fundamentals of light, perspective, camera settings, and more!

Match Focal Length & Camera Settings

A wide angle lens will exaggerate space and will stretch things out the closer they are to the camera. A telephoto lens will compress space and will typically result in more natural-looking dimensions. Learn to identify differences in focal length, perspective distortion, and depth of field to make sure all of the photos you’re compositing will fit together beautifully.

Step-by-Step Tutorials

Like many things in Photoshop, compositing is a process. We’ve created a simple guide to walk you through each step, from determining which photos you should use, to making cut-outs and selections, and tying it all together by adding additional light and color.

Photo Analysis

We don’t just show you how to merge images together, we show you why certain images will work and why certain images won’t. See several examples that demonstrate what happens when the lighting, perspective, and focal length don’t match while we try to find the right photo for the job.

Compositing Tips & Techniques

Compositing has been a staple of PHLEARN education for a long time. Over the years, we’ve developed tried-and-true methods to making the process of blending images as efficient and effective as possible. Once you have mastered the basics, move on to some our favorites like Photoshop Compositing: Essential Tools & Techniques, How to Change and Remove Backgrounds in Photoshop, and The Beginner’s Guide to Levitation.

Light, Color & Check Layers

We can’t always trust our eyes in Photoshop. That’s why we teach you to use tools that will help help interpret things like color and luminosity. Learn to match light levels and color saturation between any number of images faster and easier than ever before!