Photoshop 7 Alchemy: Apply Image
Photoshop 7 has a very cool
feature (heavy on the C-Double O- L) that has blown my socks
off. Literally� I can't find my socks. The command is called
Apply Image, which let's you take a layer and channel from
one image and blend it into another. Why is that cool? We
shall see. You need a source image and destination image
open in Photoshop with the same dimensions; once this is set
up it is time to fire up the test tubes and start mixing
chemicals. Today's little experiment will let us take a
human skull and turn it into solid gold!
First, allow me to introduce my images. I
have a sheet metal image and a human skull photo just
waiting to be grafted together.
Both images are set to 4 inches wide, 5
inches high, and 72 DPI.
Before we get to the gold, let's first look at using the
sheet metal as our destination image, and the skull as the
source.
First, create a copy of both images in new
layers respectively. This just helps us delete any less than
par effects quickly and easily, leaving us with the original
image.
By selecting the steel image, I'm
effectively telling Photoshop that this is my destination
image as this is the one the effects will be applied to. The
source image is that which we will borrow from.
With the destination image selected, we
borrow from the source by going to Image>Apply Image.
We can now choose exactly what image we want
to use to affect our destination image, as well as which
channel, the blending mode that should be applied, opacity,
and we can even tell it to work on a mask. Here is where
playing with the Blending modes comes into play, as these
are what give fire to the hearth.
To apply the skull to the image, just select
the skull photo as your source. I want it to effect the
background copy only, so I set that up in the Layer Box. For
now I am content to effect all of the Channels, so RGB is
fine. We'll take a look at 'Invert' in a second� for now
I'll leave it unchecked.
When we apply the skull image to the
destination image in Normal Blending Mode set to 100%, we
effectively replace the layer information with the skull
image. This isn't really what we want. But when we start
stepping through the various layer blending modes, the newly
blended image comes to life. Here are a few examples:
Lighten
Overlay
Pin Light
Overlay with Invert Selected
A lot of you may be going 'so?' but for
those of you into creating collages or hi-tech image blends,
this new feature takes away hours of time with just a few
clicks.
Let's change gears a little bit. I told you
I'd turn that skull into gold, so let's get to it! I've set
up my images again, but this time I want to set my Skull
image as the destination so I'll make that active.
In order to pull this off, we need to apply
the source image to the destination image twice, both times
affecting a different area (darks/shadows first,
lights/reflections second).
For the first Apply Image, my settings are
thus:
Here is the result:
We have effectively cast a color burn on the darkened areas
of the skull, using the source image to draw out the dark
areas with a metallic cast.
Now I'll go to Apply Image again, using the
exact same settings but un-checking Invert so that only the
lightened areas of the skull are effected.
Now we can adjust the Hue/Saturation to add
a bit of red to the color-
-and a small curve adjustment to add to the
metallic cast-
- and we are left with a human skull made
entirely of 14 Karat wallet-stuffing love!
There is a lot of power in this little
command, and I'll cover it more as I become familiar with
it.
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