How to blend fade one image into another in Photoshop CC

Hey there, welcome to this video. I'm going to show you how to do this where we just kind of paint in an image. So we can do a kind of a cool before and after. It's pretty simple with a Layer Mask and a brush. Let's jump in now to find out how. 

Let's open our two images that we're going to be blending. Let's to 'File', 'Open', in your 'Exercise Files' go to '05 Selections and Masking'. We're going to open up these two, 'Layer Masks 01' and 'Layer Mask 02'. It's a before and after renovation. So first of all let's be on '02', the finished version. Let’s grab the 'Move Tool', click, hold, drag up to this tab. Wait, trickle down and line it up. Let's be all serious about this, and name the layers. I've double clicked the word 'Layer 01', let's call this one 'New'. Double click the background, call it 'Old'. Let's have the new layer selected. 

Now for this blend we're using a Layer Mask but what we've done in the past is we've used something like the Selection Tool. The Rectangle Marquee Tool, make a selection, or the Quick Mask selection, or the Quick Selection Tool. We made a selection first, and then clicked on this button here. That's not always necessary, especially in this case, let's go to 'File', 'Deselect'. So you don't have to have anything selected. I'm back on my Move Tool. All I'm going to do is make sure the new layer is selected and just click on this without a selection. Nothing happens, except we've got this new Layer Mask here, and because it's all white it does nothing. 

We need some black bits in it to start masking. Have a look at some of the previous examples we've got. This is the project from the last video. You can see the black bits hide the background. The white bits show it through. Let's not worry too much about that, but let's get back into here. So we need to do two things, we need to make sure we're on the Mask. You can be on the actual image or the Mask. I want to work on the Mask. I'm going to grab my Brush Tool. It's this guy here. Click on it, he is that many down. With it selected, I pick a brush size. We're going to use something quite big in this case. So I've got mine up to about 400, and in this drop down here, I've got the Hardness down to '0'. 

Now the two main important things for this, is we've got our Mask selected, and down here we've got black as our foreground color. You see, at the moment mine is white. So to switch these two around you can click on this double arrow. If yours are kind of like shades of gray and it's not completely black, click on this little option, just kind of like resets it to full white, full black, and then click the little arrow, just means my foreground color is black. Because we've got white, if we paint it with black, we know, things that are black on the mask get hidden. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start down the bottom here, click, hold, and start painting. It's this kind of a before and after, you saw in the intro. 

How much do I want to go? I always kind of like, I like, yeah, that looks kind of good, and then I go too far, and then it's looking a bit weird. The big thing to note is, can you see down here, the black that I've painted on this Mask is hiding this current layer, the white bits are still showing through. So if I want to show things through again I just switch. White is my foreground, and watch. Watch this, and watch where I'm painting, can you see if I paint on that it starts bringing things back through. It's just a really easy way to kind of decide on what you want through and what you don't. I kind of like that. I might switch to black again, and just paint out that bit there. 

So that's a really easy way to blend two images together, make sure they're on top of each other. The top one, add a Layer Mask with no selection, and just paint on it with black. If you need to bring stuff back, paint on with white. Now I hope it's not too nerdy for you this earlier in the course but it's a really handy thing just to blend images. One thing that might catch you out though is, you can see this kind of like white box around the Mask, now it's on image, now it's on the mask, now it's on the image. 

So when I'm working on my Layer Mask it's going to work perfectly, but when you say, save this document and reopen it up, it's probably going to be back over here on the layer. Now if I'm on my layer and I use my Brush Tool, and I make sure it's on black, well this is going to happen. You're like, "I'm painting out…" It's going to switch it back, paint it with white. You can see my little layer there, you've actually just painted black and white on top of it. And you really need to hope you've got an 'Edit', 'Step Backward'. 'Edit', 'Step Backward'. Maybe you want to make it 'Step Forward'. 

All right, that is how to blend images one across the other. Let's get into the next video.