Don’t just create some art in Photoshop, put it on something, give it a little spice. Today I will be using a picture I created myself in Photoshop and then put it into a stock photo I downloaded. I got the one I’m using today at Stock Exchange. If you wish to follow along using the same example, heres the link:Stock Photo

After choosing your particular piece of art work and your background to which you will paste is on, click on the piece of artwork you plan to use. It must all be on one layer, so go up to the Layer menu and choose Flatten Image if you have to, just don’t save when we’re done. If all the artwork is one 1 layer, hit ctrl+a to select everything, then hit ctrl+c to copy it.

Create a new blank layer on the background picture (the photo of the billboard in my case) and have it above the layer of the billboard and make it your active layer. Then from the Filter drop down menu, choose Vanishing Point. You will go into the Vanishing Point Editor and will have a cross hair cursor. Click on the 4 corners of the billboard (or wall, or whatever you choose). Zoom in using the magnifying glass on the left side if necessary. After placing your 4 corners, hit ctrl+v to paste the artwork into the vanishing point editor. It will appear in the top right corner and if you hover over it, you will get an arrow cursor.

Just click and drag the artwork inside of the 4 corners and it will go into perspective. The artwork may not take up the entire area of the billboard or it may be too big. I had to make mine bigger and to do that just click on the transform tool from the left tool bar. It will give you boxes like a normal transform. You may have to drag the artwork around inside the box until you find a corner to click and drag to transform. Hold shift when transforming the size of your artwork to keep the dimensions. When it looks alright, click OK.

If you look at the image now, you’ll notice that the edges are slightly rough and the image is covering up part of the lights on the bottom. The easiest way I find to do this, is to drag the artwork image below the background and starting using the eraser tool (I’m using a hard eraser, size 13). Have the artwork image selected while erasing. You won’t actually be able to see what your erasing this way, but just stay outside the lines like a coloring book. You have to do it this way over just hiding the artwork image, due to the fact you can’t erase hidden layers.

It doesn’t have to be perfect but close works. We got it where we want it, but it still looks dull, and doesn’t really fit with the background. So click on the artwork layer, and click on layer styles right to the left of opacity and start flipping through them one by one. The layer style I decided looks the best for mine was Linear Light. It used the light well from the picture so it looked like the lights were actually casting light on my image. You can create some really cool effects by duplicating your art layer and using 2 different layer styles.

I still don’t think that the background fits very well, the orange and the blue is just too contrasting for me. I decided to make a duplicate of the background. Select the duplicate and make sure it is above the original copy of the background. From the Image drop down menu, hover over Adjustments which will give you another menu and select Hue/Saturation. Select colorize icon in the bottom right and then move the top slider to the color most fitting to your image. I chose a light blue which was 209.

You’ll notice that the particular image I choose happens to have a pretty grainy look and we don’t want that. From the Filter drop down menu, choose blur, then Gaussian Blur. Pick something that just takes the grain away (I chose 1.2). Now that you have a colored and slightly blurry background, go back to layer styles again and look through them 1 by 1 again to see if any produce an effect you like. Multiply layer style gave me a really nice look that gave it realism and looked great.