I've always said that I don't have any ethical problem with editing photos in Photoshop.  I usually don't get into cutting objects from or adding things to pictures, but not for any question of honesty.  It's just that I know that it's very difficult to do a good job, and it often doesn't look natural when the photo is finished.  I've removed power lines and construction booms, airbrushed skin, and of course cloned out dust spots.  But, I don't think any of the pictures in my gallery are hacked any worse than that.

But I saw an interesting post on a photography forum the other day.  A lady (a professional photographer) had taken some photos of a baby wrapped in a bow.  She intended to shoot the pictures with a gift tag attached to the bow that said, "Love, God."  (The idea was to say that God had sent the baby as a gift.)  But, she didn't have the tag at the time of shooting, so she promised the customer that she could just add it digitally afterward.

That was a big mistake.

She clearly didn't have the experience to know how long that would take, or even how to do it.  She was also taking a risk with her customer because, like I've said, it's very difficult to do such things convincingly in Photoshop.  If it didn't look right, the customer would be mad.

After struggling with it for who knows how long, she posted her desperate plea on the photography forum asking for help.  Now, I'm no Photoshop guru, but this one looked interesting, and I thought I saw a way to make it convincing.  So, I decided to give it a go.

Before I start explaining what I did, though, I’m making some disclaimers about the photo.  It’s not mine, but I’m using it here because the lady posted it and actually asked people to download and edit it.  Also, I’m making no claims about the quality or tastefulness of the picture.  I’m just trying to add a tag.

Also, I'm no Photoshop wizard.  I think I'm pretty good at photo enhancement, but I don't know a lot of slick techniques for this type of work (my dad probably knows them all, though).  So, forgive me if you're appalled at my clunky way of doing things.

Here's the original picture:

As a general rule, for me, the key is to keep it as simple as possible.  Look for ways to avoid visual giveaways.  Specifically:

- Make a relatively flat and simple tag.

- No extra ribbon - just tuck the tag into the existing ribbon.

- Keep as much of the tag in front of the ribbon as possible.

So, with those things in mind, let's get to work.  I’m going to move through the first steps quickly and without a lot of intermediate pictures.  It’s basic Photoshop drawing work and you should probably be able to do it on your own without much explanation if you’re going to able to follow the later steps.

1.  Open a new Photoshop document with an empty background (very important for cutting and pasting).

2.  Use the polygon lasso tool to draw the basic shape of the tag.

3.  Flood fill with a darker color.  (This is the bottom sheet for the tag.)  It's best not to use 100% saturated colors.  It would look unreal.

4.  Copy and paste onto a new layer, and make sure it's positioned perfectly over the bottom layer.

5.  Use "select => color range" to select the black area on the new layer.

6.  Use “select => modify => contract” to shrink the selection.

7.  Flood fill black.  (This will be the shadow of the top sheet of the tag.)

8.  Invert the selection.

9.  Use the eraser to erase all the black that is not needed for the shadow.  You can hide the bottom layer to make it easier to see.

10.  Invert the selection again.

11.  Copy and paste onto a third layer and make sure it's positioned right in the center of the lower layer.

12.  Use "select color range" again to select the black area on the new, third layer.

13.  Flood fill to a lighter color, and then deselect again.

14.  Nudge the black layer (second layer) in one direction to match the direction of the light source in the original picture.  THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.  If you do this wrong, it will be a very obvious clue that the tag is fake.

15.  Use a gaussian blur to blur the shadow layer just a little bit (between 1 and 2 pixels)

You should now have a somewhat realistic looking blank tag.

16.  Add the text of your choice.  Again, do not use pure black or any 100% saturated colors.  It will look unnatural.  For this, I used gray with a brightness of about 10%.

17.  If everything looks good, merge the visible layers, but don't flatten the entire image because that will get rid of your empty background.

18.  Rotate the image to get it at the correct angle.

19.  Use the "warp" tool to distort the tag and make it look like it is a little bit curled.

It’s important that you warp the image with the text already on it.  Straight text on a curved surface is another dead giveaway that something is wrong.

Now we have to shade the tag to match the curve we gave it.  Areas that receive more direct light will be lighter.  Areas that receive oblique light will be darker.

20.  Copy the tag layer onto a new layer.  Use the curves to darken the new layer.  Add a mask, and use gradients in the mask (or soft brushes) to allow the darker tag to show through in some places, but keep the lighter tag where it would be getting more direct light.  This might take some fiddling and a few separate layers.

21.  Merge the tag layers again (don't flatten completely).

Now we're ready to import it into the picture of the baby.

22. Copy the tag into the picture of the baby (duh).  Position it where it will sit inside the ribbon.

23.  Adjust the curves and saturation of the tag to match the exposure of the picture.  This is very important to achieve a convincing look.

24.  Blur the tag to the same degree of blur as the ribbon around the tag – again, very important to make it realistic.

25.  Add noise to the tag to match the image noise – once again, very important.  This will take some fiddling.  In this picture, I used a combination of "add noise" and "grain".  The grain was added on another layer and the opacity reduced a lot (to about 10%), and this layer was merged down into the other tag layer.

Here are closeup before and after pictures:

26.  Add a mask to the tag layer and start painting on it to hide the corners of the tag behind the ribbon.

The last steps are to add some cast shadows both from the tag on the ribbon, and the ribbon on the tag.  In this picture, we don't want a hard shadow from the ribbon on the tag because the main light wasn’t positioned to cast such a shadow.  We just want a hint of a shadow that we would be getting from other ambient and bounced light in the room. 

27. For this, again, copy the tag layer, position the copy perfectly over the original, and adjust the curves to darken it.

We could copy the mask from the original tag layer into the mask for the shadow layer, and then edit it some more to hide all but the shadow areas, but the way I work on masks (with soft brushes) doesn't lend itself to that.  I'd end up messing up the mask that hides the tag behind the ribbon.  So, I'm going to use a combination of a mask and the eraser tool.

28.  Just copy the mask from the original tag layer to the darkened tag layer.

29.  Use the eraser to erase the darkened mask everywhere that we don’t want the shadow.

30.  For the shadow of the tag on the ribbon, copy the original baby picture and paste it in a new layer (behind the tag).

31.  Darken the copy, adjust the saturation (more saturation because by darkening it, we made it look less saturated than the rest of the picture), and, again, use a mask to only allow the shadow areas to show through.

One more final adjustment of the curves on the tag layer, and here’s the final picture: