Adobe Photoshop Tutorial: Create A Photo Within A Photo

We're almost done. All of the work on creating the illusion of the smaller, cropped photo inside the main image is complete, and all that's left to do now is some work on the original image in the background. There's all sorts of things you could do with it. You could technically leave it alone and be happy with what you have at this point, but now that we've increased the focus on the main subject, the idea is to lessen the focus on the rest of the image that's in the background. You could desaturate it and make it black and white. You could add a simple Gaussian Blur filter to blur out the background. You could use Levels or Curves to lighten the background and give it a "washed out" appearance. There's plenty of options, and you certainly don't have to do what I'm about to do here, which is to colorize it and add a Radial Blur effect, but if you do want the same look for your background, here's how you do it.

Step 8: Use The Eyedropper Tool To Sample A Color From Inside The Smaller Photo Area

Select the Eyedropper Tool from the Tools palette, or press I on your keyboard to select it. I'm going to use the Eyedropper to sample a color from inside the smaller photo area and then use that color to colorize the original image in the background:

Photoshop tutorial: Select the Eyedropper tool to sample a color from inside the smaller photo area.

With the Eyedropper selected, I'm going to click somewhere on the helmet of the guy to sample that blue color:

Photoshop tutorial: Sampling a color from the helmet.

Notice that my foreground color in the Tools palette has now changed to that blue color I just sampled:

Photoshop tutorial: The foreground color in the Tools palette has changed to the blue color sampled from the helmet.

I can now use this color to colorize the original photo in the background, using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Step 9: Colorize The Background With A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer

Click on the Background layer in the Layers palette to select it. Then click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the palette and select Hue/Saturation from the list:

Photoshop tutorial: Click on the "New Adjustment Layer" icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and select "Hue/Saturation".

This brings up the Hue/Saturation dialog box, which I'm going to use to colorize my background. No need to start dragging sliders around to select a color here, I've already sampled my color from the image. All I have to do is click the Colorize option inside the dialog box (circled in red):

Photoshop tutorial: Select the "Colorize" option in the Hue/Saturation dialog box.

And Photoshop will use that sampled color to colorize my original image in the background:

Photoshop tutorial: The original image in the background is now colorized with the sampled color.

Click OK to exit out of the Hue/Saturation dialog box.

One last thing to do, and that's apply a Radial Blur to the background.