How We Do Portrait Head Swaps in Photoshop

Once our Light Republic clients get over the shock that we are able to convincingly swap heads around in our photographs, there is often lots of intrigue as to how we actually go about doing that.  So for anyone who owns a copy of Photoshop (or similar image editing software) this video offers a quick tutorial on the techniques.  As far as Photoshop skills go, it is not that advanced, providing you have a bit of patience. You need also to be clear on the circumstances as to when perfect results can be achieved.

Head swaps, of course, are mainly used in the context of large family portrait photography (particularly involving young children!). It is sometimes difficult to get the perfect group shot in one frame; so we might use a smiling face of a toddler, for example, in one image and import it into the base image where he or she might be blinking or grizzling.  To save any clients possible embarrassment, we have used a stock image of a family on a location shoot.  The principles are exactly the same for a studio portrait photography session.  Hope this solves the mystery!

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