Changing heads in group photos using Elements 12 for Mac

[maryo33712374]

Group photo:  How do I move heads around from one  photo to another?  One person's eyes are closed in one photo and I would like to replace her head with a good shot in another group photo taken at the same time.  I am using Elements 12 on my Mac.

[hatstead · Accepted solution]

1. Open picture B, the one you wish to select something from to add to another picture.
2. Use one of the selection tools, e.g. selection brush, lasso tool, to select the object. You will see an outline ("marching ants") once the selection is complete
3. Go to Edit menu>copy to copy the selection to the clipboard
4. Open picture A, then go to Edit>paste
5. Use the move tool to position object from picture B.
6. In the layers palette you should see picture A as the background layer, and object B on a separate layer.

[Mark_Sand]

Just a followup to hatstead's method.

In this example I changed the lady's head per hatstead's instructions. Note that the top and right side of her hair in the original picture is visible.

This problem is likely to occur in your examples. Other portions of the head (ears, chin, neck, etc) on the original might be visible after the new head is added.

To correct this I added a blank layer above the original Background layer.

Activated the Clone tool with the "Use all Layers" option.

Cloned areas adjacent to the original sticking out portions to cover those portions.

For the top of her hair I cloned some of the tree. On the right side I cloned some of the bush and house shutters.

Here I show just the clone layer so you can see what's going on: