Using a combination of photoshop and illustrator to combine photos into a frame, especially when they are the wrong shape is a challenge that I often come across and I always find it hard to approach it in the right way.

Many people choose a colour, light or dark to have a careful gradient fill take over the photo and therefore cover up the edges.

But a better way to do this, and to get much subtler blends lies in the secrets of Photoshop’s layer masks and alpha channel filtering.

In photoshop, you can add a layer mask to any layer. Initially it will seem like the layer mask had little effect. This is because when you add a mask, it is filled with all white, the alpha channel equivalent of 100% opacity. If you select this frame in the layer manager and then use a brush of black (0% opacity) and slowly mark parts that you would like to blend, you will notice they become less and less opaque.

This can be used to carefullly blend photos and other objects into a picture that would be otherwise impossible using simple transparent to colour gradients or the blend modes of layers that Photoshop provides.

A update and tutorial coming later.