Switch Faces in Photoshop

Replacing or switching faces is one of the funniest a beginner in Photoshop can easily do. In just 5 to 10 minutes (or even lesser), you'll be able to see your finished product with amazement and wide grin, or, you may burst with laughter of what you've done! And then you can even brag to your friends what you've created! Let's get started...

Preview

All you need is a photo of 2 person or more that you will work with. Similar face position is easier to deal with, so choose your photo well. It doesn't matter what facial expression it has.

Step 1

Open the photo to be used. Below is a photo of James and Chalmers of Miami Heat which we will use in this tutorial.

Step 2

Duplicate the Background layer, then select the face of Chalmers or James (whichever) first via the Lasso Tool (or any of the selection tools). Copy and paste when done. Do the same thing for the second. After hitting "Paste" (Edit>Paste...) the first time, a new layer named Layer 1 is created in you layers panel. Rename this to "Chalmers" so you can remember which face was copied. As for James, Layer 2 is created, so rename this to "James".

To paste the selected face, just grab the Move Tool and drag which face will be pasted first. Do the swapping. Fix the positioning and resizing by using the Free Transform Tool (and Perspective, if needed).

Step 3

Apply Layer Mask to both "James" and "Chalmers" layers and, using a small, soft brush, 50% Opacity, brush around the selected faces to remove rough edges or unnecessary parts on the image.

Step 4

After fixing the rough edges, you may apply some adjustments to the color and contrast to the skin to look realistic. At some instances, depending on the photo used, you may also need the Dodge, Burn, and Clone Tools. Like the final image below, I applied the Curves adjustments to make the contrast better.

Done!