Adobe Photoshop Tutorial: Using A Photo As Its Own Background

Step 5: Flip The Image Horizontally

There's one last thing to do with our background. Let's flip it horizontally so it appears as a mirror image of our main photo.

To do that, we first need to select the correct layer. At the moment, we have the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer selected in the Layers palette, so click on "Layer 1" below it which contains our background image.

Then go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen, choose Transform, and then choose Flip Horizontal.

The photo will flip sideways, giving us our "mirror image" and completing our work on the background:

Step 6: Turn The Top Layer Back On

We're done with our background, so let's work on our main image, which is on the top layer in the Layers palette. The layer is currently hidden, so click once again on its layer visibility icon to turn it back on:

When you click on the icon, the eyeball will re-appear and the original image will appear in the document, temporarily blocking the background we just worked on from view.

Step 7: Resize The Main Image With Free Transform

We're going to make our main image smaller, and we'll do that using Photoshop's Free Transform command. First, click on the top layer in the Layers palette to select it. Then use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to bring up the Free Transform handles around the image. Hold down Shift+Alt (Win) / Shift+Option (Mac) and drag any of the corner handles inward to reduce the size of the photo. Holding Shift constrains the proportions of the image as you drag, and holding Alt/Option tells Photoshop to resize the image from its center. It's a judgment call on your part how small you want to make your image. I'm going to make mine roughly 60% of its original size:

Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when you're happy with the new size of your image to accept the transformation.

Step 8: Add A Stroke To The Main Image

Let's add a thin border around our main image. We'll use a Stroke Layer Style for that. Click on the Layer Styles icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Then select Stroke from the bottom of the list of Layer Styles:

This brings up Photoshop's Layer Style dialog box set to the Stroke options in the middle column. Let's choose a color for our stroke, again by sampling a color from the image. To do that, click on the color swatch, which by default appears red:

When you click on the color swatch, Photoshop's "Color Picker" will appear, which is normally where you would choose a new color, but we're going to ignore it since we want to sample a color directly from the image itself. To do that, move your mouse over the main image and you'll see your mouse cursor change into the Eyedropper icon. Then, just as we did before, click on an area inside the image to sample the color. I'm going to sample a shade of white from the bride's dress:

When you click inside the image, you'll see the Stroke's color swatch change to the color you just sampled. When you're happy with the color you've chosen, click OK in the top right corner of the Color Picker to close out of it (even though we never actually used it).

Once you have your stroke color chosen, go up to the Stroke Size option at the top of the dialog box and set it to about 4px. You may want to set it a bit higher if you're using a large, high resolution image, but we're not going for a polaroid look here. We want something a little more elegant, especially if you're doing this with a wedding photo, so try to keep your stroke fairly thin. Also, set the Position option to Inside:

Don't click OK just yet. We have one more Layer Style to add.