Week 3 Practical Experience Photoshop CS5 Blending

I have decided to explore Photoshop CS5 for my practical experience.  I have a desire to learn how to extract, merge, and blend photos to create surreal images.  In particular, I would like to take action photographs that I have taken of my dancers, extract the images from the background and combine them with photos of the construction zone on our campus which is currently being rebuilt.  I started tutorials on Lynda.com and began with blending.

In the first tutorial, these 3 images are combined to create an interesting advertisement.  This is just what I need for my next program.  The three shots are combined using layers and adjusting opacity and light.  While the instructor goes through numerous shortcuts, I prefer the logic of the mouse.  I learned how to easily blend to create images that are more engaging and more exciting.  I also learned the shortcut of using the "move" tool with option to make duplicates of the flamenco dancer in this shot to create this final image:

I am looking forward to gaining new skill in photo editing and using my skills to create programs and marketing material for my dance department.