In the tutorial Today we will see ” difficult choices made simple “, A resource for when we have select items of irregular shapes lead us to abandon the work by the thought of doing any of the selection tools we all know (read loop, polygonal lasso , pen , layer mask , etc.).

With this trick, you can select not only irregular shapes, but also maintain transparency of the object. We can use it to water ( waterfalls , waves ..) , glass ( glasses, bottles …) and even in some cases , hair .

Here are the photographs that will work :

What we try is to put the waterfall in the other image. Although we will not see in detail, then we zoom in to see the effect achieved .

Step 1: Open the image a (mountain) and duplicate it with CTRL + J. Then open the image 2 ( cascade) on the same canvas , in a layer above the image 1.

If necessary resize the waterfall with CTRL + T. We give you 50 % opacity to the waterfall from the Layers panel to see through it and place it where we want to show the waterfall

Step 2: Once located in the place we want, its opacity back to 100 %. What we do then is select the polygonal lasso (or your favorite selection tool ), and mark a selection around the waterfall. In this way:

This is approximate , but by way of example , to see that the selection should not be required , taking all that is water particles around it.

We’re going to Edit> Copy Merged . We went to the layer panel and see that right there is the flip of ” channels “( usually found there . Failure to be , we can open it from Window > Channels ). Once in the Channels panel , create a new one, which is automatically called ” alpha1 ” . At that moment will be all black .

And this why? Usually called alpha channel everything is transparent. And if we remember previous tutorials, black is the color that takes as its transparency.

Now with alpha channel created, paste copied image we had on that channel (Edit> Paste).

Step 3: What we will do next is the most important step . Here we make a contrast between black and white , so as to take the slides and singled jagged edges and water particles .

Tip: Not too much, not so little: finding balance.

Then go to Image> Adjustments> Levels and run the switch from black to find this item under discussion. My result for this picture is this:

As we see is only water . What I marked in red in the picture is for the following: Since I like and do not want it to look , then what I will do is paint it black , being careful not to paint many particles.

Step 4: To select this, you click on the alpha channel with the CTRL key pressed. It will be a selection not complete in our eyes , but in reality is what we need .

Before turning to the layers panel again , we must put the RGB channel visible by clicking on the box to hide the channel visibility and alpha1 in the same way (see image above).

Now if we can move to the layer panel to see the selection in the image.

Step 5: Create a new layer , which we call “Cascada transparent” . Even at this layer and with the active selection , we will Edit> Fill . The display of this tool , we use the color white as content to Normal mode and opacity to 100 %.

Accepted and press CTRL + D to deselect . If you do not hide the image layer with the waterfall , we do , so that the layer is visible only with the image of the mountain and the cape “cascade transparent. ”

While we have the waterfall perfectly ” cut ” , we have not managed to give realism to the image. Missing? Say water is not soaking anything… The rocks below the falls have the same color as the rest .

Step 6: Create a new layer between the waterfall and rocks. We take the paintbrush and selected as your foreground color # 1f2110 or similar (black). We painted the whole area behind the waterfall and sideways.

Step 7: In this layer , we went down its opacity to 50 % and change its blending mode to ” Linear Light . ”

Finally, and because I am something ” vueltero ” I gave him a blur . This of Filters> Blur> Gaussian Blur with a value of 8px .

Link | Integrar cascada en paisaje con Photoshop