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Now switch to the moVe tool and drag your selection (from within the selected area) over to the document that you’re working on. In this case I’ve brought over two different images of my friend from the same professional photo shoot.

Here is where you can shine as a designer. I, myself am also an avid digital photographer and when I was at the Photoshop World conference I was walking through Chinatown in San Francisco on one of the nights with a friend from Hawaii.  She asked me why I was taking a picture of this dragon logo and I told her because I’m always using my ‘eye’ to look out for something that I could use within a design...and sure enough here I am finding that this is the perfect element to add to this design! 

If you can develop this state of mind and think as a Photoshop designer (and be crazy enough to always carry a digital camera) you can be aware of millions of things that no one else would even recognize or care about that you can use. I encourage you to strive towards this level of passion and devotion because it will help set you ahead of other designers.

Being very experienced in Photoshop I know that I have powerful blending modes that will instantly make a perfect match into the design. I used the circular marquee tool holding down the shift key and moved it into exact position to get the circular selection in place. Use the moVe tool and drag it over into the design.

Now be aware of your layer order. You may have to move it below the top layers in the layers palette (depends on which layer you were last on) because in this case, we want it as part of the background (naturally). Try out some different blending modes. There are several that will work in this case...find something that you like.

Here is the power of the blending modes like you’ve never seen them. Since we have such a clean source image, duplicate it (like I usually do) and change the blending mode of the replicate layer to Hard Light (it will depend on your actual source images). This creates a perfect higher contract immediately by mixing the light levels of the two layers. Hard Light (& Overlay) is my favorite blending mode just because it’s hardcore and effective for most circumstances I’m in. Here it just creates a healthier glow with shinier skin!