How to paste a picture on a TV in Photoshop CS4

If you pay attention to advertising, then you might have wondered how the photographer captured the picture on television and computer screens so clearly. Generally, taking a picture of a screen won't render properly and will leave you with a poor photograph. For this reason, graphic designers usually photoshop the picture on blank television or computer screens. In this tutorial, we're going to look at how to paste a photograph on a television screen in Photoshop CS4.

First, select the pictures you want to use. I'm using a stock photo of a television from stock.xchng and a stock photo of a butterfly from MorgueFile. Open both files in Photoshop and look at their sizes by pressing Ctrl + Alt + I or going to the top bar and clicking Image and then Image Size. Compare their sizes and - making sure the constrain proportions and scale styles checkboxes are selected - reduce the size of the butterfly. I've reduced the width to 800 px (though this can always be made larger or smaller later).



Now switch back to the photo of the TV. We need to select the inside of the screen, and the easiest way to do that is with the polygonal lasso tool. Click on the little black arrow at the corner of the lasso tool for more options and select the polygonal lasso tool.



Click on each of the four corners of the television screen, making sure to draw the line just the smallest bit past the black edge framing it because you don't want to leave any white spaces. Once you finish, click back on the first point to complete the selection; you should see the marching ants marquee appear.



Switch back to the butterfly picture and select it by pressing Ctrl + A or going to the top bar and clicking Select then All. Copy the picture and go back to the tab with the television. Next, go to the top bar and click Edit then Paste Into to put the picture inside your selection.



The picture will appear, but it won't fit the screen just right because of the angle of the television. To adjust the picture angle to match the television, we need to transform it. Go to the top bar and click Edit, then Transform, then Perspective.



Use the corners on the bounding box to tilt the picture to the right; since the television's right side is pushed back, you should pull on the right side of the picture as well. Once you are done with that, click on the arrow at the top of the workspace to apply the transformation. Then, press Ctrl + T to further transform the picture and make it bigger to fit the TV screen. Hold down on the Shift key while pulling on one of the corners to constrain the proportions. You may have to give it more perspective when you're finished scaling it.



The only thing left to do is give the picture layer an inner shadow to give it some depth. Click on the fx at the bottom of the Layers panel on the right hand side of the workspace. From there, choose Blending Options and then Inner Shadow. You want the distance and the size to be 8 px and the angle to be 30 degrees.



And it's that simple! Once you get the hang of it, editing images of televisions and computers for your ads will be a snap. You can always call a web and graphic design company, such as Codank Web Design, for help with your graphics.

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