Getting Your BEST Head Swap Photo!
This article includes advice for choosing the perfect pictures to use for a head swap photo edit. I’ll be calling the main photo that you are building on to the “base photo” and any photos that are used to change people’s expressions the “add on photos”.
Benefits of Merging Faces or Head Swapping
The benefits of being able to trade heads and faces in your photos are numerous! They include . . .
- Enjoying the moment! Knowing you can fix pictures later lets you be in the moment & enjoy making the memories, not trying to get a perfect picture (which we both know doesn’t happen anyway!)
- Being less stressed! It makes the process of actually taking group pictures much less stressful because you know you can get them edited if needed.
- No disappointment! Knowing you can get whatever you fixed takes away the disappointment of not having a satisfactory group photo!
You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t know all that already though. The better question is, “How do I pick the best pictures to head swap?” Quick answer; you will need to take into account lighting, angle of the photo, and quality of the photo.
Maintaining similar lighting is important because shadows from different angles in the same photo or varying levels of shadows will make the edited image look “off” even if you can’t put your finger on the problem. For example, blending an add on picture of a person with harsh shadows across his face with a base photo that was taken with a flash and is a bit washed out will look wrong. I can adjust the lighting and correct shadows to some extent, but the more similar it looks, the better result you will get.
Using photos with similar angles is essential. The base photo and the add on photo needs to be taken from the same angle (both from above, below, straight-on etc.) If the entire group is looking straight into the camera and you try to add on a picture of someone who is staring down at the camera, it is going to look wrong because you’ll be looking up the one person’s nose!
Quality is critical! I can’t work with what isn’t there. It is so important to start with a good, high quality 300 dpi photos if it all possible. It is very obvious when the base photo is a high quality photo and the add on photo is something small swiped off an instagram account or something similar.
Does color matter? Surprisingly color is not the most important thing to consider when finding photos that can be blended together. Yes, a black and white photo isn’t able to be blended into a color photo, but most often I am able to edit the color tone, exposure, etc to make the added photo match the base photo extremely well.
The Ideal Head Swap Set Up
You might not be able to get a perfect photo with everyone looking, but you can definitely set yourself up for success when taking family or group photos. My best tip when taking group pictures to try to piece together an image where everyone is looking is to take a LOT of pictures at the same time. You will thank yourself once you sit back to check out your options for head swapping! To get the best results when switching heads or faces, provide pictures taken at the exact same time and place. You will get the best results doing this because the lighting, angle of the faces, and angle of the camera will all be very similar.
To take the best pictures to build the perfect head swapped image, take 5-10 pictures of the same grouping back to back without moving the camera.
~ Alissa @ Refined Photo Editing
My family does this every time we want to get a decent group picture by taking at least 5-6 pictures back to back within a few seconds. We have a lot to work with and generally find that each person looks decent in at least one picture and I can blend them together when I edit them.
Learn more & purchase my head swap listing here! Please contact me or leave a comment below with any questions or additional tips! I’ll be adding to this list as needed to keep it current