Step 9: Open The Image You Want To Fill The Silhouettes With

Let's make our silhouettes look a bit more interesting by filling them with a fun background image rather than leaving them filled with solid black. Open the image you want to fill your silhouettes with. As I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, I'll use the starburst background we created in our recent Classic Starburst Background tutorial:

Step 10: Drag The Image Into The Silhouettes Document

With both your Silhouettes document and your background image open on your screen in their own separate document windows, click anywhere inside the background image to select it and make it active, then click on the Background layer in the Layers palette and drag the layer into the Silhouettes document:

Release your mouse button and the background image appears in front of the silhouettes in the "Silhouettes" document:

You can close out of the background image once you've dragged it into the "Silhouettes" document. If we look in the Layers palette, we can see that the background image now appears on a layer named "Layer 1" above the other layers in the document:

The reason why the image appeared above the other layers is because Photoshop automatically placed it directly above the layer that was currently selected. In my case, I had the "Girl" layer selected, so Photoshop placed the background image directly above it. If the "Boy" layer had been selected, Photoshop would have placed the background image between the "Boy" and "Girl" layers.

Step 11: Create A Clipping Mask

At the moment, the starburst image (or whatever image you're using) is blocking both of my silhouettes from view. Obviously, that's not what I want. What I want is for the starburst to appear inside one of my silhouettes. For that, we need to create a clipping mask, which will "clip" the starburst image to whatever is on the layer directly below it. In my case, the girl's silhouette is directly below it, so when I create the clipping mask, the only part of the starburst image that will remain visible is the area that falls within the silhouette. This will create the illusion that the silhouette is filled with the starburst pattern.

To create the clipping mask, make sure you have "Layer 1" selected in the Layers palette, then go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and choose Create Clipping Mask:

With the clipping mask created, the starburst image becomes clipped to the silhouette directly below it, making it appear as though the silhouette is being filled by the starburst:

Step 12: Resize and Reposition The Background Image If Needed With Free Transform

With "Layer 1" still selected, press Ctrl+T (Win) / Command+T (Mac) to bring up Photoshop's Free Transform box and handles around your background image, then resize and reposition the image as needed until you're happy with how it appears inside the silhouette. You can also rotate the image if needed by moving your mouse cursor outside of the Free Transform box, then clicking and dragging your mouse. The Free Transform box and handles will appear around the actual dimensions of your background image, even though the only part of the background image you can see is the area inside the silhouette:

Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when you're done to accept the transformation and exit out of the Free Transform command. We now have our first background image-filled silhouette: