In Photoshop, add birds to a photo and make the background transparent.

This is a fun tutorial. When you have a great landscape photo, you can really add life to it by adding a flock of birds. You don’t have to worry about cutting out each bird either, this tutorial shows you how to easily hide the background and let the silhouette show through.

Choose File>open to open both images in Photoshop)

Here is an image of birds in the sky.

Choose the Rectangular marquee tool.

Drag a selection around the birds you want to use.

selecting the move tool (v).

To transfer the birds, drag their selection up to the tab for the other image. Release the mouse in the new window after the image has opened.

Watch this action in the above video.

You will see your selection of birds appear on the new document.

I purposely chose a more difficult image to work with, often your sky will be gray, white or blue.

If there is color in your sky, press Ctrl+Shift+U / Cmd+Shift+U on mac (Image>adjustments>desaturate.

This will remove the color from the selected layer.

TRANSPARENTIZING THE BACKGROUND
We must now conceal the background so that the birds are only visible against transparency.

There are many ways to accomplish this, and I demonstrate additional methods in other courses, but this method is the most effective for this kind of image.

Where it says “Normal” in the Layers panel, click and select Darken from the menu. The blending mode switches to Darken, which covers up white.

Your white sky will no longer be seen if it is.

Doing this will make the sky transparent if it is grey.

For levels, use Ctrl/Cmd+L.

Slide the white triangle to the left until the bright pixels (sky) disappears.

Click ok, its that easy!

With the move tool, (v). Hold Down the Alt (windows)/Option (Mac) key and drag out copies of the birds if you want.

I hope you enjoyed this quick little tutorial. Its always fun to do these types of tutorials.