revised instructions 1> start up a new file. make sure its a square (say 800x800px). 2> draw a dark-coloured, thickish line (20px), rasterize the layer and duplicate it. 3> hit ctrl+t on the duplicate layer and rotate it through 90 degrees. you should have a cross now. 4> merge the two layers with the lines making the cross. be sure not to merge the background too!! 5> add 75% monochromatic, gaussian noise to the cross. these are the helicopter 'blades' viewed from on top. 6> link the background and the blades layers, select the background layer to set it active, and align the layers (Layers --> Align Linked --> Vertical Centres ....repeat for Horizontal...) 7> open up your image and get rid of the stationary halicopter blades using the stamp, heal tools. 8> drag the blades layer from the other file into this file. alternatively, you could also copy/paste... 9.5> optional :-D... you might want to invert the colours so you can see your blades on the dark pic. 9> hit ctrl+t.... now this is the crux of this tute... 10> keeping the ctrl key pressed, try dragging on the corner handles with the mouse. you'll be able to distort the blades any way you want to (limitation being that the bounding box cannot be a concave quadrilateral) 11> once you have distorted the blades so that they look ok, hit enter. 11.5> invert colours back :-D 12> position the blades on the rotor. do they look too light to you? 13> duplicate the layer twice (that's what worked for me) 14> erase variable parts of the duplicate layers to give added realism (lighter foreground, darker background) 15> and you're done :-D these are the steps which i followed to get to the attached image. my instructions should be lucid enough. if you do get stuck, post here, we'll help out :-D palash