Blending Two to Make One

I rarely use Photoshop Layers when I work up an image. On occasion I have, but most of the time the layers used were just a part of a plug-in software process that used them behind the scenes. However there is a simple way to use layers to create a new image from two separate images. The image shown below was made using this method.

First of all you need two images; the main background image, and the layered image that will be placed on top of the background image. In my example the background image is the wheat harvest farm equipment and the overlay image is the flag.

Using Photoshop Elements; First step is to open both the background image and the overlay image, then return to the background image.

Then, drag the overlay image, in this case the flag, into the background image. This will create a new PassThrough layer.

 Next grab the corners of the overlay image and expand it out to completely cover the background image and position the image the way you want it to line up.

Then using the Opacity slider, reduce the opacity of the layer down to something like 20% to 25% or to whatever looks good to you. Last step is to flatten the layer and save the new image.

It is that simple. This kind of operation can be used for a multitude of effects using a variety of image types.