Photoshop Tutorial: How to Swap Heads and Faces of Two Images

Swapping faces or heads in images is not an unusual thing. A lot of times it's actually used in magazines, catalogs, and many other places. But now this fun technique is not only for professionals any more. With this tutorial you will learn how to combine pictures and put a face on a different body. Impress your friends with your Photoshop skills! Let's get started.

Step 1. First, open the two photos that you will be using to change faces or heads as their own canvases in Photoshop. PSD or JPEG format. To make this tutorial easier, re-name each photo as follows:

Body Photo: The photo that has the body you want to replace with a new and different head.
Head Photo: The photo that has the head that you want to put onto the Body Photo.

Step 2. With the head photo opened and selected, use the Lasso tool and draw a selection around the head carefully. Be sure not to miss any details or features of the head.

Step 3. Once you have the prefered area selected, click CTRL+C or copy to copy the head onto the Photoshop clipboard.

Step 4. Now paste the head onto the body photo by clicking CTRL+V or paste. Now it should start to come together, the only problem now is that it isn't blended properly, and chances are the images aren't scaled or sized the right way.

Step 5. Click CTRL+T to go into Tranform mode. Move and resize the head to fit proportionately and 100% correctly over the body. Use your best judgement on sizing

Step 6. Important: Make sure the layer with the new head layer is active. Select the eraser tool and begin erasing the surrounding background around the new head so that is blends better togother.

Step 7. Select the Clone Stamp Tool on the vertical menu bar.

Step 8. Select the body photo layer and begin to clone stamp out the areas of the old head underneath so that only the new head is what is visible.

Step 9. Finally, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation and adjust the saturation sliders so that the images math up together. Do this for both layers, the new head layer and the old head/body. If the brightness levels of both photos are drastically different, then goto Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast and adjust the levels of the two layers so that they match much better than before. Try to get is close as possible.

And then when you're done, merge the two layers and save it! You're done and you now have a cool new picture to show off and print out.