Okay, in Photoshop I figure there's gotta be some kind of tool that lets me make an image look transparent?? You know, like see-through?? So's I can put two images on a rendering and have the second image kinda behind the first, but the first image transparent enough to let me see the second image through it???? Anyone here have the know how on this?? I have seen it done, so please do tell?? ~3D ;-)

I don't have Photo Shop, I have Painter, but I'm sure it's very similar in both. Use layers and adjust the transparency of the top layer to get the effect you want.

Select the layer you want to make transparent in the layers palette. Click in the upper right-hand corner of the palette where it says "Opacity" and a slider will appear. Drag the slider to make the layer more or less opaque as desired. Use layer masks with a gradient fill applied to create effects where an image fades into another one. Gromit Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Oooh, thank you so very much!! It all sounds so simple now, but you folks just saved me looking through dozens of pages in a how to book!!! I do love this forum, it simplifies things so much!! ;-)

Also if you do your renders as .tiff's you can cut the extra background image away from the figure by selecting the alpha channel, inverting the selection and then deleting the background. With that you can move figures around in the scene. Add some drop or perspective shadows to add to the illusion. -Trav

Thanks for even more help bud! ;-)

If you're compositing renders made against a black or white background into a background image, you may find that it adds to the photorealism if you use Layers, Matting, Remove Black Matte or Remove White Matte. This will clip off the remaining background pixels from your figure. The other thing I do when I want to add shadows is to copy the layer the figure is on, fill the copy with black, move it so the layer is below the figure's layer, use the transform tools to distort it so it looks like it's on the ground plane or whatever, do a Gaussian blur to soften it, reduce the opacity to around 50% or whatever looks good, and it makes a pretty good shadow as long as the light is coming from behind the viewer, so the shadow extends into the picture. If I need a shadow to be in a different direction, I usually do a separate render from a camera position pointing from the direction of the light source. Then I do the same operation, filling it with black, etc. to create a shadow that appears to be geometrically correct. Gromit

Thanks again, this is a wealth of resource for me in just this one thread!! ;-)

Gromit: I can't thank you enough for posting that tip. I do all of my renders on black or white, and the edges have always been a problem. The shadow tip is incredible! -Trav