In this case, we are going to work with only the lion image, since the procedure is exactly the same for both.

If you think you may want to come back to this image later on and add to it, be sure to save this image twice.

First, you want to save it in *.psp format. From the menu bar click File/Save Copy As and make sure the file type you select is Paint Shop Pro (*.psp). Why?

This image contains layers. When you save it in anyother format, for example jpeg or gif, PSP automatically merges all the layers into a single image. Once that is done, it can't be Un-Done.

All the layers are gone. So save a copy first in psp format, then in whatever other format you want to use.

Thanks Petra for making this suggestion.

Let's begin... First, open you lion image.

Now, just press the L key on your keyboard to open the Layer Palette.

If you place your mouse over the tab that says Background you should see a small image of your lion. Thats because the lion, is the background. We want to change him into a layer.

So, simply double click on the background tab and the Promote Layer and Edit Properties box will pop up. Just change the layer name to lion and leave everything else the same.

Now, hit your L key again, and we want to add a layer. Click the upper left icon on the dialog box, it looks like 2 sheets of paper, and when the Promote Layer and Edit Properties box pops up, name this layer mask.

Your layer palette should look like this:

with the mask tab on top. GREAT! Now we're ready to start our mask.

From the menu bar, select Masks/New/Hide All.

Than Masks/Edit and finally Masks/View Masks.

You will notice several things have happen.

First of all a red overlay has been applied to your image

This over lay is actually the mask. The other thing that happened is your color palette has changed from the 16 million colors it was displaying to a mere 256 shades of black and white.

I don't claim to fully understand the principles involved here, and there are better explainations available on this topic.

Surfice it to say, for our purposes, that to "remove" a mask area, you paint with white and to replace a mask area (or apply a mask) you paint with black.

So we are going to want to make sure that our foreground color is pure white and our background color is pure black. So click on the foregound color box (the top box) in your color bar palette

Now click your background color box (the bottom one) and select the first black box in the palette, that is pure black.

You color bar should now look like mine.

Good, now that we have our mask ready, lets rocks and roll....

We only want to get the lions head, so select your paint brush. To being with, I used these settings:

Zoom in a little on your image, and while holding your left mouse button down, begin to trace around the outside of the head.

As you do, you will notice the red overlay is being removed.

Any area of your image not covered with red will show up when we finish. So, continue to trace out the outside of the head.

Heres a tip. PSP offers an UnDo command. When you click this, any work done since your last mouse click will be Un-Done.

Don't try to trace out the whole head in one move. If you do, and get almost done and then make a mistake and click Un-Do, you get to start all over again....

Double click your mouse button every now and again. That way if you have to use the Un-Do command, you only lose a small portion of your work.

OK, continue to trace out the completed head. When your done, remove all the red from the inside area of the head.

I like to work along the edges first, get that done, than clean up the inside.

When your done, you should have something that looks like this

Now, we want to remove this head area from the original image. So from the menu bar click Selections/From Mask.

A team of "marching ants" should appear around your image

This is the only portion of the image that will be copied.

Now here comes "the trick"......

Before you can use our basic Edit/Copy Edit/Paste command, we have to hit our L key to open the layer palette. Now, select the tab that says lion. Your image should have changed to this

The red overlay is gone, but you can see your head is still selected. Now, in this example, I decided to take one extra step.

I wanted to give my copied head a "faded" look around the edges. So from the menu bar, I selected

Selections/Modify/Feather and set the value to 5.

Now, from the menu bar, select Edit Copy to copy our head to the clipboard, than Edit/Paste/As New Image and this is what we end up with

You will notice the background consists of the checkered pattern which means in this image, the backgound is transparent.

Now, after doing my tiger, I intentionally made a mistake to demonstrate how you can "fix" a problem.

In this case, I removed too much of the mask from one side of his face

and this is what the end image looked like

To fix this, simply reopen yor original tiger image and unselect your selection. From the menu bar click Masks/Edit Mask.

Now, in your color bar, click that little 2 sided arrow, to swap the foreground/background colors around

now, just paint over the area you want to cover up.

finally a Edit/Copy and Edit/Paste/As New Image, and this is result.

That looks a little better. Remember, when dealing with masks. To remove some of the mask, paint with white. To add some mask, paint with black.

Finally, to end our project, we want to combine these 2 images into the single image we saw at the begining. When placed side by side, we see the lion is the larger image.

so we want to start a new image that is going to be large enough to handle both images.

With the lion image selected, from the menu bar I go to Image/Image Informtion and find my lion image is 197x194 pixels.

So I'll create a new image sized 325X200 with a transparent background.

I wanted my example image to blend into the background of this page so I flood filled my new image with the same texture I used for my web page background.

Now, select your lions head and from the menu bar click Edit/Copy.

Now, select your new image and from the menu bar select Edit/Paste/As New Layer.

If you select the Mover tool from the tool bar

you can place your cursor on the lions head and slide it around the image.

Now, follow the same steps for the tiger head. When your done, you notice the tiger head is still a little smaller than the lions.

We can fix this. First, make sure the tiger head layer is active by hitting your L key and selecting it.

Now, select the Deformation Tool from the tool bar

and you will see a resize box appeared around your tiger head.

(Green background added for contrast)

Just grab the resize boxes and drag out the head till it more or less matches the lions head size.

Look at this image with the layers palette box opened.

You will notice the layer tabs read (from top to bottom) tiger, lion and layer 1. In the image, you can see the tigers head is on top of the lions head.

Suppose you wanted to change it, so the lions head was on top in the image?

Easy.... On the layer paletter place your mouse on the lion tab. If you click on the lion tab and while holding the left mouse button down, you can move the tab. The mouse pointer turns into a hand. Move the lion tab and place it right smack on top of the tiger tab and let the mouse button go.

You will notice the order of the tabs changed and in the image, the lions head is now on top.

This allows you to change the order in which the layers appear.

Heres one final IMPORTANT tip....

I hope you found this tutorial helpful or informative, or just plain fun. I know I had fun doing it.