How can you put a background on a pic for PhotoShop CS3?

I'm a beginner and I'm not sure how to put a background for a pic.


I was told to drag the background on to the pic but it doesnt seem to work.How can you put a background on a pic for PhotoShop CS3?
You have to use layers and layer masks, this will help. Say you have a photo of yourself, and you want to put a new background in. The photo of you is in a city, but you want to put in a background that is a jungle. You can open both images (I am going to assume for simplicity that the images are the same size and resolution, I'm just giving you the basics for right now). Before you do anything else, do a Save As for both images and select Photoshop (.psd) as the file type. You want to do this because most likely your images are .jpg images and they will not support layers.





You can click on the jungle image with the Move tool (looks sort of like an arrowhead with a funny plus sign), then hold down the mouse button and drag that image over to the photo of you. It will come in on top of the image of you, but it will be on ITS OWN LAYER. (Note if you can't drag, try doing a ctrl +A if on the PC or command + A on a Mac. You will see the ';marching ants'; outline around the image. Now you can do a Copy + Paste onto the photo of you.)





Layers: one of the most useful things in Photoshop. Make sure your Layer palette is open (by default it should be, if not make sure it's not hiding on the side鈥攍ook for a tab that says Layers, or go to the Window menu and click on Layers. If there's already a check mark there, it means the palette is open, and probably hiding behind another palette). You will see two thumbnails now. One of them will be for the image of you and the other is the jungle background. If the thumbnail image of you is labeled ';background'; double click on it to unlock it. You will get a little dialog that says ';Layer 0';. You can click okay, or name that layer whatever you want. Now, back in the Layers palette, click on the other layer, which is the jungle. DRAG that down, below the layer thumbnail that's you. If you watch what is happening in your image window, when you brought the jungle background into the image it covered up the photo of you. Now you will see the image of you, and the jungle is hidden.





From this point, you have several ways of doing things. You can just erase the parts of the photo of you that shows the city, which will reveal the jungle underneath. But this can be a problem. A better way is to use a layer mask. Make sure you have selected (clicked on) the layer thumbnail of you. It will be highlighted. At the bottom of the Layers palette you will see an icon that looks like square page with a folded corner. Click on that. You will see another white thumbnail appear next to the thumbnail of you. Now, go to your Tools palette. You will see at the bottom two squares. They should be set to black and white. If not, click the smaller squares underneath to reset them. Black should be in the front, white behind. Now, click on the Brush tool, select a soft edged brush. Next, click on that white thumbnail, it's the Layer Mask thumbnail; you are selecting the Layer Mask rather than the layer itself. What you are going to do is paint on the mask. This is going to HIDE parts of your photo to reveal the jungle underneath. So start painting with the brush, and you will gradually see the jungle show through. If you paint too much (say you mask out part of yourself), just hit the X key to change from black to white on your brush, paint out the mask where you don't want it. Hit the X key again to go back to black.





The reason you want to do it this way is you are not changing the photo of you, you are just hiding or showing parts of it by using the mask. This is called non-destructive editing, because you aren't changing the image itself.





There's more to it than this; you may have to do things to fix lighting problems (for example, you might be photographed in the city, and there are some shadows on you from buildings or whatever. When you change the background to the jungle, the light is different and the shadows look wrong). But I wanted to just get you started with how you can change the background or add a background to an image.





Hope this helps!