If you've followed part one of this tutorial then you should have a helicopter image on a plain background. If not, then it can be found here. This part deals with using a layer mask and adding in a cityscape as a background.





Open the cityscape image. If you were using a different background image which was lacking contrast then, as with the helicopter image, you could add an s-curve using a curves adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves). In the case of this cityscape, there is no need. Apply the Fresco filter (Filter > Artistic > Fresco). This time we will set Brush Size to its maximum setting. This is done to reduce the amount of detail and make the image less distracting when we overlay the helicopter on top of it. Play around with the Brush Detail slider until you are happy with its effect. You should now have something similar to the below-right image.




Go to Select > All and then copy the whole cityscape (Ctrl + C for Windows users). Paste into the helicopter document. The cityscape should now be the topmost layer, obscuring everything else from view. For now we are done with the cityscape, so click the eye icon in the layers palette to hide it from view.

To allow the helicopter to be visible we are going to create a layer mask. This allows us hide portions of a layer - the digital equivalent of cutting a hole in a photograph, allowing whatever is placed beneath it to show through. To create this mask we first need to duplicate the semi-transparent helicopter layer from Part 1 of the tutorial. Select the layer, right-click and choose Duplicate Layer. Use the slider to drag opacity back up to 100%.

Now comes a spot of freehand painting using the Brush tool. Set the foreground colour to black and start filling in the body of the helicopter, taking care not to paint over the windows. When you have something resembling the below-right image then you are ready to move on to the next step. Rename the shadowy image something more descriptive than its default title. "Helicopter silhouette" or "Layer mask" will be fine.




Now that we have our greyscale layer to use as a mask, we need to add a layer mask to the city image. In the layers palette, make the city layer visible again and click the add layer mask button as circled below. For now the mask is solid white. We'll return to that in a minute, but first click the channels tab and make the city mask layer visible.




Switch back the the layers tab, click on helicopter silhouette layer, choose Select > All and copy the layer (Ctrl + C). Now click on the solid white layer mask and paste the silhouette into it (Ctrl + V). If nothing happens at this stage, you may need to click on the channels tab and make the city mask layer visible again, before re-attempting to paste into the layer mask.

Hide the layer containing the helicopter silhouette and ta-da! The helicopter from Part 1 should now be flying over the city.




The final step is to make the helicopter appear to be breaking out of the top of the frame. The quick way to do this it to use the rectangular marquee tool to select the chunk of cityscape you want to keep, go to Select > Inverse and then delete the rest. If you want to be a little more precise then you can use guides.




Be sure to check out the accompanying Photoshop document, which can be found in the downloads section here.

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