Echo: One Subject, Layered Moments

Session 6 · Layer Mastery: The Power of Masks

You are taking two photos of the same kind of subject, doing two different things, and layering them into one poster where they blend into each other instead of sitting side by side. A large hero shot dominates the frame. A second, smaller shot overlaps it low in the composition. Where they meet, there is no seam, just a soft fade from one photo into the other.

You already know how to cut a subject out of a background with a layer mask. What you have not done yet is paint on one by hand. That is the entire lesson today: a mask is not just on or off, it is a full range of gray, and the brush is how you control it.

What You Turn In

Midpoint turn-inLastName_Blend.jpgYour two photos merged into one blended composite. Submit as soon as you finish Step 6.
Final turn-inLastName_Echo.jpgThe finished poster with color wash, grade, and headline.

Pick Your Photo Set

Pick one set below. Every set is the same subject at the same event, photographed in three different moments, under one consistent lighting color. That consistency is deliberate: it is what lets the two photos blend into each other instead of looking like two unrelated pictures stacked up. Each set gives you a Hero (the large, dominant shot), a Secondary (smaller, a different moment), and an optional third for Step 11 if you have time. All files are posted with this assignment.

Set A  ·  Golden Hour
A skateboarder at a beachfront skatepark at sunset. Three moments from the same session: a close mid-air grab, an approach at the edge of the bowl, and a wide airborne shot. Everything is lit by the same low sun, so all three already share one warm gold color. All three are tall photos, so they drop straight onto the canvas with no reframing. Start here if you want the smoothest run.
Set B  ·  Concert Night
A singer performing live under blue stage light. Three moments from the same show: a full-body shot, a tight close-up mid-note, and a wide shot of the stage. All three are lit blue, so the set holds together as one scene. The Hero is a tall photo; the other two are wide and need the reframing move below.
Set C  ·  Track Day
A runner at an outdoor track, photographed across one training session. Three moments that tell a clear story in order: set in the starting crouch, running mid-stride, then sitting on the track afterward. Same athlete, same navy jacket, same red track, same overcast daylight throughout. All are tall photos, so no reframing needed. There is a fourth alternate crouch shot in the folder if you prefer a side angle for your Hero.
Set D  ·  Spotlight
A ballet dancer in a white tutu, alone under a spotlight on a dark stage. Three moments at three different sizes: a big dramatic arabesque, a quiet close-up of her face and shoulders, and a wide shot with the whole stage dark around her. Everything is lit by the same single spotlight, so the color matches almost exactly across all three. All are tall photos. One warning: the skirt is see-through, so the Quick Selection Tool will fight you a little at the hem. Because your background is dark too, a slightly rough edge there barely shows.
Using your own photos instead. Any two action photos of the same general subject work, as long as both are well lit and at least 1200 pixels on the short side. A single strong photo also works in a pinch, since Step 4 can place a cropped, re-scaled version of the same file as your Secondary instead of a second source image.
Reframing a wide photo. Two of the three photos in Set B are wide photos going onto a tall canvas. This is normal and takes about fifteen seconds. In Step 2 or Step 4, scale the photo up with Free Transform until your subject fills the canvas height the way you want, and let the extra width run straight off both edges. You lose some background on the sides, which is usually an improvement, since it keeps attention on your subject instead of the scenery. Sets A and C are all tall photos and need none of this.

A Quick Refresher Before You Start

Why paint a mask instead of just erasing

The Eraser Tool removes pixels permanently. A mask hides them, and hiding is reversible. But the real reason to paint on a mask instead of relying only on a selection is control over degree. A selection gives you a hard yes-or-no edge. A soft brush at low Flow lets you dial an edge down gradually, from fully visible to fully hidden, over as much distance as you want. That gradual fade is what makes two separate photographs read as one continuous image instead of a sticker pasted on top of another photo.

Step 1  ·  4 min  ·  core

Build the Canvas

A tall poster shape, built once and used for the rest of the project.

  1. Go to File > New (Ctrl+N).
  2. Width 1200. Confirm the dropdown beside it reads Pixels, not Inches.
  3. Height 1500. Resolution 72. Color Mode RGB Color, 8 bit. Background Contents White.
  4. Click Create, then Ctrl+0 (Cmd+0) to fit it on screen.
  5. Save it now as LastName_Echo.psd.
Check your work: A tall white rectangle, noticeably taller than wide. If it looks square, the numbers went in backward.
Step 2  ·  8 min  ·  core

Place and Mask Your Hero Photo

Same tools as the album cover project. Move quickly, this part is review.

  1. File > Place Embedded, choose your Hero photo, drag a corner handle until your subject is large and fills most of the canvas height, press Enter to commit.
  2. Right-click the layer and choose Rasterize Layer.
  3. Select the Quick Selection Tool (W). Drag across your subject to build the selection. Hold Shift to add missed areas, hold Alt (Option) to subtract background you grabbed by mistake.
  4. With the selection active, click the Add Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.
  5. Rename the layer HERO.
Check your work: Your subject floats over white canvas with no visible background around it. Two thumbnails on the layer, photo and a white silhouette mask.
Step 3  ·  4 min  ·  core

Scale and Position the Hero

  1. Select the HERO layer and press Ctrl+T (Cmd+T) for Free Transform.
  2. Hold Shift and drag a corner handle to resize proportionally. Aim to fill roughly the top two-thirds to three-quarters of the canvas.
  3. Drag from inside the box to position it. Leave open space in one lower corner, that is where your Secondary photo goes next.
  4. Press Enter to commit.
Check your work: The Hero dominates the frame, but one lower corner of the canvas is still open and empty.
Step 4  ·  6 min  ·  core

Place Your Secondary Photo

Same process as Step 2, faster this time since you just did it.

  1. File > Place Embedded, choose your Secondary photo, commit it, rasterize it.
  2. Quick Selection into a layer mask, same as before. Rename the layer SECONDARY.
  3. Press Ctrl+T, scale it noticeably smaller than the Hero, and position it in the open lower corner so it overlaps the bottom edge of the Hero by roughly a quarter of its own height. That overlap is deliberate, it is where Step 5 happens.
Check your work: Two subjects on screen, one large and dominant, one smaller and overlapping its lower edge. Right now the overlap has a hard, visible seam. That is expected, you are about to fix it.
Step 5  ·  10 min  ·  core

Blend the Overlap With a Painted Mask

This is the core lesson of the entire session. Take your time and work in short strokes.

  1. In the Layers panel, click directly on the white mask thumbnail next to your SECONDARY layer, not the photo thumbnail. A thin white border appears around it when it is the active target.
  2. Select the Brush Tool (B). Press D to reset your foreground and background colors to black and white, confirm black is in front. Press X any time you need to swap them.
  3. In the options bar, open the brush preset picker. Set Hardness to 0%. This is what gives you a feathered edge instead of a hard circle.
  4. Still in the options bar, find Flow and set it to around 25%. This is not the same field as Opacity, they sit near each other, do not confuse them. Low Flow means one stroke only partially hides the layer, so you build the fade gradually instead of erasing everything in one pass.
  5. Set your brush Size large enough to cover the overlap area comfortably, using the [ and ] keys to adjust on the fly.
  6. With black as your foreground color, paint slowly across the seam where SECONDARY overlaps HERO. Watch the mask thumbnail, you will see gray appear where you have painted once, and darker gray where you have gone over it again.
  7. Keep building it up in passes until the seam disappears and SECONDARY seems to emerge out of HERO rather than sit on top of it.
  8. Painted away too much of SECONDARY? Press X to switch to white, lower the Flow if needed, and paint it back in.
Check your work: No visible line where the two photos meet. If you can point to exactly where one photo ends and the other begins, keep painting. If the transition is soft enough that your eye slides across it, you are done.
Common mistake. Painting with Flow at 100% just replaces the hard photo-cutout edge with a hard brush edge, no better than what you started with. The gradual buildup at low Flow is the entire technique, do not skip it to save time.
Step 6  ·  4 min  ·  core · midpoint turn-in

Save and Submit Your Blend

  1. Ctrl+S to save your PSD.
  2. File > Export > Export As. Format JPG. Quality by whatever your slider shows: top of a 7-point scale, or 80 to 90 on a 100-point scale.
  3. Leave Convert to sRGB checked.
  4. Name it LastName_Blend.jpg and upload it to Canvas right now.
Why you submit halfway through. Same reason as every project this semester. If something goes wrong from here, you have already turned in complete work.
Step 7  ·  6 min  ·  core

Add a Gradient Wash Behind Your Composite

A second use for a mask, the gradient tool instead of a brush. This puts a color behind your subjects that fades in rather than starting or stopping abruptly.

  1. In the Layers panel, click your HERO layer, then click the Create a New Layer icon. Drag the new layer down so it sits directly above the white Background and below both your photos.
  2. Pick a foreground color that matches the mood of your set. Warm amber or burnt orange for Golden Hour. Deep navy or purple for Concert Night. Brick red or navy for Track Day. Charcoal or deep plum for Spotlight. Press Alt+Backspace (Option+Delete) to fill the new layer with it. Rename the layer WASH.
  3. Click the Add Layer Mask icon on the WASH layer. A white mask thumbnail appears and the whole color layer is visible.
  4. Select the Gradient Tool (G). In the options bar, confirm the gradient preview shows black fading to white, and the style is set to Linear, the first icon in the row of gradient shapes.
  5. Make sure the mask thumbnail on WASH is the active target, click it if you are not sure. Drag from near the top of the canvas straight down to roughly the lower third, holding Shift to keep the drag perfectly vertical.
  6. The top of your canvas returns to white, and your color fades in behind your subjects toward the bottom.
Check your work: A smooth fade from white at the top to solid color at the bottom, with no visible banding or hard line. If the whole layer just disappeared, your drag direction or gradient colors are backward, undo and check that black is your foreground color before dragging again.
Not happy with where the fade lands? Drag the gradient again, it fully replaces the old one. There is no limit on how many times you can redo this.
Step 8  ·  6 min  ·  core

Unify With One Color Grade

In Mood Swing, every adjustment layer was clipped to affect one panel only. Today you want the opposite: one grade that touches everything.

  1. Click the topmost layer in your stack so the new adjustment lands above everything else.
  2. Add a Curves adjustment layer. Do not clip it. Left unclipped, it affects every layer beneath it at once, which is exactly what you want here.
  3. Build a gentle S-curve, same move as Mood Swing Step 2, to add a little contrast across the whole image.
  4. Add a Vibrance adjustment layer above it, also unclipped. Push Vibrance up slightly to make your color wash and photos feel like they belong to the same world.
Check your work: Toggle both adjustment layers off and on. The whole canvas, wash included, should shift together. If only your photos changed and the wash did not, one of your adjustment layers is accidentally clipped, right-click it and choose Release Clipping Mask.
Step 9  ·  6 min  ·  core

Add the Headline

  1. Select the Type Tool (T). Click in open space, usually behind or beside your Hero, and type a short word, a name, a place, a single bold statement.
  2. Highlight the text. Set a heavy, bold font and a large size in the options bar. Set a color that reads clearly against your wash.
  3. Open Window > Character and set Tracking to around 100 for wide, deliberate spacing.
  4. Press Esc to commit. In the Layers panel, try dragging your text layer to sit below HERO instead of above it. Part of your subject now overlaps the type, which reads as more integrated than text simply floating on top.
Check your work: The headline is legible, and at least part of it sits behind your subject rather than entirely on top of it.
Step 10  ·  4 min  ·  core · final turn-in

Save and Export

  1. Ctrl+S to save the PSD.
  2. File > Export > Export As. Format JPG, Quality at the top of whatever scale your slider uses, Convert to sRGB checked.
  3. Name it LastName_Echo.jpg and upload it to Canvas.
Check your work: Two files submitted today, LastName_Blend.jpg from Step 6 and LastName_Echo.jpg from this step.
Optional Step 11  ·  7 min  ·  if time allows

Add a Third Photo

If your set included a third image, or you want to reuse a different crop of one you already have, repeat the technique once more for extra depth.

  1. Place and mask your third photo the same way as Steps 2 and 4.
  2. Scale it smaller than SECONDARY and tuck it into the opposite corner or a different edge of the canvas.
  3. Blend its overlap the same way as Step 5, soft brush, low Flow, on its own mask.
Do not overcrowd it. Three subjects is plenty for a poster this size. If the composition starts feeling busy, that is a sign to stop adding, not a sign to add a fourth.
Optional Step 12  ·  4 min  ·  if time allows

Compare Against the Fast Way

Now that you have done the manual selection and mask by hand twice, see how the one-click version compares.

  1. Select one of your photo layers, open the Properties panel, and click Remove Background.
  2. Compare its edge quality against the mask you painted by hand, especially anywhere with hair or loose fabric.
  3. It is usually faster. It still cannot fix a hard seam between two overlapping photos, that part is still yours to paint by hand.

What This Project Was Actually About

Two things, and neither one is the specific photos you chose.

A mask is a range, not a switch. Every project before today used a mask as an on-off cutout. Today it became a dial, and painting in shades of gray is what lets two separate photographs read as one continuous scene.

Clipped versus unclipped is a choice, not a rule. Mood Swing clipped every adjustment to isolate it. Today you left adjustments unclipped on purpose, to unify instead of isolate. Knowing which one a job calls for is the actual skill, not memorizing one setting.

Troubleshooting

Tools Used in This Project

Quick Selection Tool, Layer Mask, Rasterize Layer, Free Transform, Brush Tool with mask painting (Hardness and Flow), Gradient Tool on a mask, Unclipped Adjustment Layers (Curves, Vibrance), Layer Stacking Order, Type Tool, Character panel tracking, Export As.

Optional steps add: Remove Background comparison.