It always happens. You are taking photos of two or more people and you get the perfect smile of one of your kids in one photo… and the perfect smile of the other kid in another photo. Getting both to give you a great smile at the exact same time can be a challenge some days (but I give some really good time to greaten your odds of doing it in this post.) When all else fails, it’s Photoshop to the rescue. In this post, I am going to walk you through how to do a face-swap in Photoshop step-by-step. I highly recommend you check out my YouTube video on this as well so you can see me do this visually. Click the image below:
Choosing Images
First, you want to choose images that were taken at the same time in the same lighting. Of course, you can use another photo from a different time but the lighting will almost certainly be off and it will require you to do a lot more work and much more advanced Photoshop techniques. To keep it simple and maximize your chances for success, choose photos to take at the exact time in the same location.
Editing
Edit the photos exactly the same. We want the lighting of both photos to look as spot-on as possible.
Face swap
Now the fun begins. Here is a step-by-step guide on how I face swap.
- Make sure both images are open in Photoshop.
- Use the quick selection tool (W) to select the face you want to put on the image.
- Right-click and choose “layer via copy”. This will create a new layer of just the face. Rename it “face”.
- Make sure the face layer is selected and click on the face. Hold down and drag the face to the image you want to put the face on.
- Release and put your face approximately where you think it should go.
- Lower the opacity to 50 on the face layer to line it up.
- Once it is in place, make the face layer 100% opacity. Zoom out and make any necessary adjustments.
- Choose the face layer, and hit the camera-looking icon in the layer’s panel. It will create a mask layer.
- With the mask layer chosen, choose the brush tool and make sure black is the color. Start to erase any of the face layers you do not want.
- If you erase too much, no worries. Change the color to white instead of black, and brush to bring that part of the layer back.
- Constantly zoom out to see how the image is looking.
So there you have it, step-by-step of how to do a face swap in Photoshop! Now it’s time to get editing!
π¨ Need help with Photoshop Basics? Check out my course, Editing Essentials!
Did you just copy paste from Adobe’s own website?
https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/face-swap.html