Photoshop Tutorial- Animal Hybrids v2.0

This tutorial will teach you how to combine animals in photoshop. To start, please select two animals of similar color and orientation. For this example, I didn't do this and I picked a lizard and mouse. Here was my original inspiration:http://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/quick-tip-combine-a-crocodile-and-a-frog-in-photoshop--psd-22326

Open both in photoshop and decide what part of each animal you want to combine. You may want to crop the image so you can do the following steps better (focus on the part you want). In this example, I chose to put the lizard's head onto the mouse's body.

First use the Quick Selection tool on the left side (4th down) and use it to select the part of the animal you want. Tips: Using the left and right brackets helps to change the size of the selection. Pressing the "alt" key on a PC or "option" on Mac will let you remove part of the selection. If this don't work, simply use the lasso tool for this step.

After you have done this, press Cmd + C on Mac or ctrl + c on a PC to copy the selection. Then open up a your second image. Then create a new layer. This can be done by going to the layer tab at the top of the tool bar. When you have done this, make sure you select this new layer and paste your selection (cmd or ctrl + v).

Then go to Edit > Free Transform, and maneveur the lizard head onto the mouse body and match the orientation.

Next, we will change the color of the mouse to more closely match the lizard head. You want to select the mouse. Create the new fill/adjustment layer option in the layers tab.Select the Colour Balance option and on Tone Balance choose the Midtones Option. Then move the sliders to match the color. You could go the other way and change the head color however. At this point you may choose to end the project or continue to tinker with the image with the different blur and color tools.

However, I took a different approach. After I changed the color, I chose to use the clone stamp tool (S) and cover the mouse in lizard skin. Use option or alt click to make the selection then use the tool to add more scales. I could have done a better job of this by using the orginal image as the selection though.

And so, you can create something just as creepy, moderately frightening, and not at all fluffy as this is.