Tutorial: AKVIS Chameleon

Enliven the scenery

The tutorial has been created by Philipp Schuster in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.

AKVIS Chameleon will help you to turn a boring picture into a lovely photo collage just by adding new objects from other photos. AKVIS Chameleon will perform the difficult job of adjusting the pasted objects to the new background and processing the borders of these objects.

• Step 1. Open the images for the photo collage in your photo editor: a photo of the sky (it'll be the background image), an image of a bird and white clouds in the blue sky.
  
• Step 2. Start mounting the collage by adding the clouds to the photo. Use the Lasso tool to select the clouds. The selection does not need to be precise; it can include the sky around the clouds.
  
• Step 3. Copy the selection and paste it into the photo of the sky. You can do it in two ways: either by using the commands of the menu item Edit (first copy the selection using the command Copy, then paste it into the photo with the sky using the command Paste) or using hot-keys (copy - Ctrl+C, paste - Ctrl+V).
  
• Step 4. Adjust the position of the pasted clouds on the background.

  To change the size of the object use the command Transform - Scale from the menu Edit. You will see a frame with markers around the object. Use the left mouse button to drag one of the corner markers. The ratio will stay the same if you keep the Shift key pressed during the drag transfer.

  Having set the dimensions of the monument, press the button Enter or the button in the Options palette.

  To change the position of the clouds on the background select the Move tool from the Toolbar and use the left mouse button to drag the clouds to the proper position.

  
• Step 5. Call AKVIS Chameleon by selecting the command AKVIS - Chameleon from the menu Filter.
  
• Step 6. Now comes the bird. First we select the bird with the Lasso tool, then copy the selection and paste it into the background (the new layer with the bird should be located over the layer with the clouds). Call the command Free Transform from the menu Edit to change the size of the object and to rotate it a little bit.
  

  Use the Move tool to align the bird in such a way that its wing was over the cloud.

  
• Step 7. Call the plug-in AKVIS Chameleon again by selecting the command AKVIS - Chameleon from the menu Filter.