How to Add a Background to a Digital Photo
- 1). Open the foreground image and select the background. As stated on Adobe's website, "A selection isolates one or more parts of your image. By selecting specific areas, you can edit and apply effects and filters to portions of your image while leaving the unselected areas untouched." There are a number of tools that do this and the one that works best depends on your image. The marquee and lasso tools allow you to draw the selection using freehand, a path can be created with the pen tool and turned into a selection, the magic wand will select an area based on local color, and the masking tool lets you paint a mask over part of the image that then turns the unmasked area into a selection.
- 2). Open the background image and select all or part of it. Copy the selection to the clipboard and then return to the original image.
- 3). Paste the copied image into the selection on the original image. Move the background around to ensure the best placement. You want to avoid edges that just touch each other or placing areas of low contrast together. Overlapping foreground items over background items adds depth and believability to the composite image.
- 4). Apply a filter, such as a Gaussian Blur or Unsharp Mask, to help blend the textures of the two images together. Subtlety is the key here, so make sure the filter you apply is kept to minimum. For a Gaussian Blur or Unsharp Mask, this means keeping the pixel radius low.
