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You can go well beyond repairing and improving individual photos, fixing spots, scratches, tears, replacing missing content, and moving stuff around to make things better — even with a low-end, image editing application's capabilities. You can do a lot with multiple images, combining them into a single image and using special effects for a really creative result.
When combining images, you don't really have any rules. You can combine black-and-white photos with color images, professional portraits or photographic artwork with amateur or family photos, pictures of people with pictures of places — anything that makes sense to you. You can create a collage, assembling parts of various photos into a composite image, or you can mix content from two or more photos and retouch the combined result to make it look like the combined content has been together from the start.
Is there anything along these lines that image editing software can't do? With the midrange to top-level packages, the limitations are fairly . . . limited. You may run into limitations in terms of special effects and retouching capabilities, which can hamper the success of the creative side of your combinations. Those limitations, however, are software-specific, such as not being able to adjust the opacity (see-through quality) of content within a photo or not being able to place different parts of a composite image on separate layers.
Whether you're using a Windows-based PC or a Mac, you have the ability to cut, copy, and paste content from one file to another, or to share and duplicate content within the same file. This capability makes it easy to take content from one photo and add it to another, either by removing it from its original location or making a copy that appears in both photos.
To copy content from one photo and paste it into another, follow these steps, which work in virtually any image editing package:
1. Open both the source image (the one where the content you want currently resides) and the target image (the one that will receive the copied content).
2. In the source image, use a selection tool to select the content that you want to copy.
You can use either a freeform or geometric-shaped selection tool. Your choice depends on the shape of the object that you want to copy.
3. Choose Edit --> Copy.
This step places a duplicate of the selection in your computer's memory, where it waits for you to paste it.
4. Go to the target image and choose Edit --> Paste.
5. When the pasted content appears in the target image, activate the Move tool and then drag the content into the desired position within the photo.
 | If you're using software that lets you put different parts of an image on separate layers, the pasted content probably has its own layer — a layer created automatically through the pasting process. You can leave the content on this separate layer or use your software's layer-handling commands to merge the paste layer with the rest of the photo. Of course, you merge layers only after you place your pasted content in the desired spot and you're sure that you don't want to move it again. |
 | You can activate the Copy and Paste commands with your keyboard, as well as through the Edit menu. To copy, press Ctrl+C, and to paste, press Ctrl+V. If you're on a Mac, the shortcuts are Command+C and Command+V, respectively. |
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