Photoshop - bringing 2 pictures together

There's lots of ways to combine photos in Photoshop. If you have 2 images that are part of one big picture (in other words, they have some overlap), you can open the 2 files and select Automate from the Photoshop menu, and go to Photomerge. Photoshop will automatically combine everything for you!

If you're looking to put one image over another and fade between them, you can do that with a layer mask.
Place the image you want to apply fading to on top, and then click the "mask" icon (a square with a circle cut out) at the bottom of the layers panel. Or, select Laver>Layer Mask>Show All. You'll get a white mask attached to your layer, and by default, it is selected, so any painting you do will paint on the mask until you deselect it.

So, pull out your gradient tool (G key) and with a white to black gradient selected, drag the mouse from the area where the fade-out should start to the area where it should end. The gradient will be applied to the mask, creating a gradual fade-out. Try this technique using the brush tool and the smudge tool for more neat ways to blend images together!

Hi,

I still can not get it to work. I have 2 images in .jpg files and want to put them side by side and create one image out of them. I tried the instructions above and still cannot get it. I went into photoshop, clicked on new then went in and clicked "place" and went to go retrieve my two pics. When I put them side by side and after it asks me if I want to place them, I can only move the last picture that I placed. The first picture will not move for some reason so I can line them up side by side, equally. Ideally, I would like to feather the center line out after the pictures are joined together but even if I could put a border around the 2 pics (after they are joined together) that would work as well. i have attached the two files for you to see. Anymore help you can give me would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. I see. Place does not work in quite that way; it's typically used for placing other types of art object (like Illustrator files, Raw files, etc) into a document without simply pasting (keeps them editable).

The main roadblocks that you sound like you're running into are canvas size and locked background layers.
Easiest way is to make a new document that's wide enough for both photos, open the 2 jpegs you want to use, and drag both jpegs into the new document. If you start with one jpeg open and try to drag or place another into it, you'll run into technicalities.....

When you open a jpg in Photoshop, it comes in on a layer named "Background." This layer is locked and cannot be moved because jpegs don't support layered documents (thus, you can't move the contents to reveal anything beneath). You can convert this special kind of layer to a normal Photoshop layer just by double-clicking on it.

To make your canvas wide enough to accommodate 2 images side by side, you need to go to Image>Canvas Size and change your width to something wider.

I've put together a very brief video to demonstrate combining photos, along with the masking technique I described earlier...There's no audio, but I think it shows the process clearly; let me know if there's any questions, though!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx0r4Iue8Eg

Hi There,

Okay, I got the pics side by side the right way however, for the life of me I couldn't get the gradient in the middle. I followed your video instructions clip by clip ( I work off a mac (CS2) but have a pc as well, so that worked out well..stop and go....). For some reason I got all the way to the clicking on the gradient then going to the top, choosing the top left hand selection, but when I came down between the two pics (my curser is like a plus sign at this point) and I clicked like you did, the opposite side of the the picture on the right was fading out, not the middle part??? Make sense???