Blend Images with Generative AI in Photoshop

Photoshop's Generative Fill tool has changed how designers and photographers seamlessly merge different visuals into a single composition. Whether creating surreal landscapes or blending multiple exposures, Generative Fill offers a powerful and intuitive solution for achieving stunning results. Today, let's explore the creative potential of using Generative Fill in Photoshop to elevate your image blending skills.

This step-by-step guide is based on my Photoshop Advanced Training course. When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this course as well as my 30+ additional courses on Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Webflow, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

STEP 1: EXPAND THE CANVAS

With our image selected, choose the Crop Tool in the left panel. The Crop Tool gives us the ability to shrink or expand our canvas.

Before expanding our canvas, we want to set the tool to create a transparent background. The setting is in the top panel above the canvas.

Now, we can grab the white frame handles and extend our selection. We can expand our canvas in any direction. For this project, we are blending a new sky image and extending the frame upwards. 

STEP 2: ADD A SECOND IMAGE

Next, add the second image we will blend with the first one. Go to File > Place Embedded. Choose an image, and click Place to insert it on the canvas. With the second image in place, adjust its position and size. 

On the image of the sky, there is a section at the bottom we don't want to use in our composition. We're going to remove the section.

STEP 2.1: MASK AN IMAGE (Optional)

Choose the Marquee Tool from the left panel, and select the portion of the image you want to keep. Now, a portion of our image has a dashed frame around it. The frame resembles ants marching across the screen.

In the right panel, select the layer to add a mask. We have selected the layer labeled 'sky.' Just below our layers panel is the option to Add a Vector Mask. Click the button, and magically, our sky image is how we want it! 

STEP 3: BLEND IMAGE WITH GENERATIVE FILL

Now comes the fun part! First, let's use the Marquee Tool to select a portion of both images. For Photoshop's Generative AI to work, we need to provide plenty of pixels from both images. 

Since we wanted to include all the mountains in the background of our first image, we selected the house, too. However, we want to keep the house as it appears. To deselect the house, we will use the Lasso Tool. Holding Alt or Option, click-hold-trace around the house. Now, the house is omitted from our selection. 

The moment has arrived for us to use the Generative Fill panel! You might have noticed the panel when you first made a selection with the Marquee Tool. Sometimes the bar gets in my way, and I drag it somewhere else on the canvas.

First, click the Generative Fill button. It will change to a prompt field for us to describe what we want to generate. However, we are skipping this step for now. Instead, we are clicking Generate and letting Photoshop work its AI magic!

Wow! Photoshop's Generative Fill did incredibly well! Our two photos look like one seamless image. We also get two other generated image variations in the right panel. Click on each version to view them all and choose the best one. Very cool!

What’s next?

Dive deeper into utilizing generative AI in Photoshop at Bring Your Own Laptop. When you become a BYOL member, you will gain access to my Photoshop courses as well as my 30+ additional courses on Illustrator, Lightroom, Figma, Webflow, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

See you in class! – Dan