Using Photoshop 5.5

There are many ways to perform this effect with Photoshop. However, I am going to show you the easiest way that I have found when using a single picture.

The task: We wish to blend the picture sebastian.jpg on our black background. On this page you can download a zipped version of this file with the MS Word 97 document here (253Kb)

• Open up the file sebastian.jpg.
• The very first task you want to perform with any pictures is to save it as a PSD file so that we do not mess up our original picture.
• Click on File\Save As and save it as sebastian.psd. Note: make sure that you select Photoshop (*.PSD;*.ODD) from the drop down menu.
• Create a new layer by clicking on the Layer menu item and selecting New\Layer. Call this layer Oval.
• Make sure that your Layers\Lhannels\Paths dialog box is visible (by default in the lower right corner) If not, select the Window menu item and click on Show Layers.
• On the Layers tab, your "Oval" layer should be visible and active (paint brush icon).
• Click on the Elliptical Marquee Tool (M)
• On the picture, click on coordinates 50x50 and drag the marquee tool down to coordinates 575x425
• Right-Click on the picture and click Select Inverse.
• From the menu bar click on Select then Feather
• At this point you can blend as much as you wish, but for this tutorial, we will feather 10 pixels. Click OK.
• In the Foreground Color Background Color box on your tool bar, click on the Foreground Color.
• Enter the color #000000 to make it black and click OK.
• Click on the Paint Bucket Tool(K) and fill the outer edge with black.
• Deselect the area and Tada! You’re finished! 

Now that was too easy. This picture is now ready to be saved for use with black backgrounds.

Thanks,
Bogie
[email protected]
www.bogiegraphics.com