Written By Steve Patterson

In a previous tutorial, we learned how Photoshop's Paste Into command lets us easily place one photo into a selected area of another photo. In that tutorial, we recreated the same effect seen every week in electronics store flyers where the latest movie or video game is displayed on all the latest big screen HDTV's. In this tutorial, we'll add more action and excitement to the effect by making a person or object appear to be leaping right out of the screen!

Here's the effect we're going for:

To create this effect, you'll need a photo of a tv, computer monitor, cell phone or something similar (a quick Google search will give you lots of choices), and you'll need the photo that contains the person or object that will be jumping out of the screen. I'll be using Photoshop CS5 throughout this tutorial, but any recent version of Photoshop will work.

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Let's get started!

Step 1: Select The Screen

Open your image of a tv or other similar display device. Here's the image I'll be using:

We need to select the screen itself, since that's the area we'll be placing the second photo into. The tv screen is made up of nothing more than four straight sides, so Photoshop's Polygonal Lasso Tool will make things easy. I'll select it from the Tools panel. By default, it's hiding behind the standard Lasso Tool, so I'll click on the Lasso Tool and hold my mouse button down until a fly-out menu appears, then I'll select the Polygonal Lasso Tool from the list:

Then, with the tool selected, all I need to do to select the tv screen is click once in each corner. I'll click first in the top left corner of the screen, then the top right, down to the bottom right, and then over to the bottom left. Finally, to close the selection, I'll click again in the top left corner where I started. When I'm done, a selection outline appears around the edges of the screen:

Step 2: Open The Photo That Will Appear Inside The Screen

Now that we have our screen selected, open the image that will appear inside of it. The image will open in a separate document window. Here's the photo I'll be using:

Step 3: Copy The Image To The Clipboard

Press Ctrl+A (Win) / Command+A (Mac) on your keyboard to quickly select the entire image. A selection outline will appear around it. Then press Ctrl+C (Win) / Command+C (Mac) to copy the image to the clipboard.

Step 4: Paste The Photo Into The Screen

Switch back over to the document window that contains the tv screen (or whatever screen you're using). We're going to paste the second photo into the selection we created. If you're using Photoshop CS5 as I am, go up to the Edit menu in the Menu Bar along the top of the screen, choose Paste Special, and then choose Paste Into:

If you're using Photoshop CS4 or earlier, simply go up to the Edit menu and choose Paste Into. Photoshop pastes the second photo directly into the screen:

If we look in the Layers panel, we see that Photoshop has added the second photo on a new layer above the image of the tv on the Background layer. We also see that Photoshop used our selection outline to define a layer mask for the image, which is why it's visible only inside the tv screen even though the actual size of the image is larger than the screen area. The white area in the layer mask preview thumbnail represents the area inside the document window where the image is visible, while the black area surrounding it is where the image is hidden from view:

Step 5: Turn The Layer Mask Off

Hold down your Shift key and click directly on the layer mask preview thumbnail in the Layers panel:

This will temporarily turn the layer mask off, allowing us to see the entire image in the document window. The tv becomes hidden behind the photo:

Step 6: Lower The Opacity Of The Layer

In a moment, we're going to reposition the image exactly where we need it in front of the tv. Of course, it would help if we could actually see the tv as we're doing that, so let's lower the opacity of the layer. You'll find the Opacity option at the top of the Layers panel. By default, it's set to 100%. Lower it to around 60%:

With the opacity lowered, the tv becomes visible through the photo in front of it:

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