getting the hang of Photoshop?

[Mister.Proto]

I just got Photoshop elements 7
and right now my main purpose is to use it to crop images and put it into another picture..

the thing about "layering" is I dont really know how to work it :P
I get the concept..

im trying to take a picture of my friend and fit him in front of a picture of a lambourgini... I put the car as a background, but I have no clue how to get the pic of my bud as layer 1?

[Liffey]

Open the picture of your buddy. Press Ctrl+A to select the entire image. Press Ctrl+C to copy the image. Press Ctrl+W to close the window. Open the picture of the car. Press Ctrl+V to paste the image of your buddy. You can also complete this process by simply clicking and dragging from one image window into the other image window. Either way will result in two layers. Make sure the image of your buddy is selected and is the top layer, hit E to select the eraser tool, and erase the background of the photo of your buddy, revealing the background of photo behind it. This will require some precision, especially around the hair. Once you've finished this, you'll probably notice that the lighting is wrong. From there it gets tricky, so just try and get this far first. :)

[Mister.Proto]

well ok everything works up to here :)
but how do I move the person a little? if I want to adjust? , and about the lighting/shadwos?

[Liffey]

To move a layer press V to switch to the Selection tool. Then just click and drag. As for the lighting, experiment with the settings found under Image > Adjustments. It depends on what your picture looks like, but it's a good idea to learn them all and see what makes the front picture fit with the back picture. As for making the light source match, this requires some digital painting skills. You can get a start by using the Dodge and Burn tools to create shadows and highlights, but the end result will look amateurish. To change the light source convincingly requires quite a bit of skill, so I suggest looking through other topics (especially this (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=107217) one). To paint digitally you will also need a Wacom Tablet.

[ragupasta]

Just to add, if you erase the background from your buddy, and make a hash of it, then you will have to start over again. A better way is to use layer masks.

The concept behind layer masks is, that if you paint an area with a black colour, those pixels you paint will become 100% transparent, and adversly if you paint white, that becomes 100% opaque. So you can effectivly erase without damaging the source image. If you make a mistake, simply change the colour to white and re-paint the area back in that you messed up.

Just be sure you select the mask in the layers window before you start to paint.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c44/ragupasta/layer_mask.jpg