Simple Blending

Tutorial

1. Take the three images of your choice and make sure they're equal in height. It's ok if they're not equal in width.

2. Make a new canvas, and copy and paste all three images on there. Make it so that two side images overlap the middle one.

   

   I'm naming the layers right, left, and middle, so that they will be easy to refer to.

   

3. Using the Rectangular Marquee tool , make a selection that covers the ends of the right and left images.

   

4. Go to Select >> Feather. Set it to about 30px.

5. Select layer right, and then hit Delete on your keyboard once or twice.

   

6. Select layer left, and again, hit Delete on your keyboard once or twice.

   

7. Deselect (Ctrl + D) the selection, and now you have this.

   

   You can stop here, but let's take it a little further.

8. Merge Visible all of the layers together (Ctrl + Shift + E or Layer >> Merge Visible). Now we have one layer instead of three.

   

9. We want a copy of this layer. Select all (Ctrl + A), then Copy (Ctrl + C), and Paste (Ctrl + V).

   

10. With the top layer selected, do a Gaussian Blur (Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur). Set it to 1px.

    

11. Now change the Blending Option. Overlay or Soft Light usually works well. I will be using Soft Light with mine.

    

    And this is what we end up with!