Santa Hat Tutorial
I am sick of poorly added Santa hats to pictures! You cannot just cut out a Santa hat, stick it on, and expect it to look OK. There's a little more to it than that!

Tutorial using PSCS... Ok, not an Icon, but can be used for Icons *Points at own icon*


This tutorial is based on a picture my friend reed3000 sent me and asked me to modify.


(Click for full size)

I drew myself a nice santa hat in photoshop. It's a png, so the background is transparent, makes it easier to select.



Open the PNG in photoshop. Hold Ctrl and click on the image representing this layer, to select the hat. (Alternatively, using the magic wand tool, click the transparent background, then use ctrl + shitf + I to select the inverse)



Now, we just take our image, and paste the hat in as a new layer. I need to do everything twice on this picture, as there are two hats. Ignore that fact, I will just describe everything once as I worked on the woman first - the process repeats itself on the guy.



Using transform, and a little bit of rotate, drop the hat into position and roughly size it.





My tutorial doesn't end here though. Now we grab the perspective and/or distort options (Edit>Transform>Distort or Perspective) and fiddle about with the hat until it looks a bit more realistically positioned. (Ignore how bad the guy's hat looks. It will be sorted later, haha.



Zoom out and look at the picture you're working with. Mine is quite dark, with an orangey hue. The light is coming from the top right. So, let's try to match this. I drop the brightness on the hat.



Next, I take the dodge tool, and lighten the hat where the light is hitting it.



Now, to match the orangey hue, I apply a photo filter to the layer (Image>Adjustments>Photo Filter)



It's starting to look much better. Finally, I take my burn tool, and add more shadows on the hat, and, I also switch to the background layer, AND ADD A SHADOW UNDER THE HAT, ON THE GIRL'S HEAD. This makes the image look more realistic, as the hat casts a shadow on her face.



I repeat the process on the guy...



Just add a little Gaussian blur (think it was 0.5px) to give the hats the same sort of blurry look as the rest of the image (click for full size). Voila!



And THAT, ladies and gents, is how you put a Santa hat in a picture.