How many times have you been asked to insert a Cantina alien into a photograph? If you are anything like us, the answer is puh-lenty. In an effort to aid you, the valued Toshi Station reader, in invigorating your Greedo-to-Photo process, we've taken loquacious action. Below is an abbreviated "tutorial" on some basic image manipulation - as performed in Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (though we're not doing anything that wouldn't play out smooth in 5.0).

	Step 1. Two Men Enter, One Man Leaves After you have selected a "Base" image (Livewire), you'll need to score a suitable "Source" image. If you have the luxury of choice, find something that offers similar lighting (from above, from the side, ambient, whatever) and viewing angle as the Base image. After farming the image repositories over at theforce.net and jedinet.com for the elegant visage of one Greedo Q. Rodian, we came upon an apropos head shot with a good angle - right here.
	Step 2. Clone Wars First prep the Base image for Rodian transplant. This is done using the Clone Stamp tool and a feathered brush. Removing the target noggin' from Livewire here was fairly straightforward, as the background to be cloned is a single solid color - no odd patterns or objects to redraw.
	Step 3. Shrinkage Next Greedo's mug is sized to match his future Base image body. This typically takes several attempts at shrinking then drag-and-drop onto the Base image. Use Layer Opacity to fade it a bit, which will help in judging if the price is right. This particular image demanded to be shrunk down to 23%. Be sure to keep the layers intact through the rest of the process (that is, Base image as background + Greedo head Source layer).
	Step 4. The Man Behind the Mask Now remove everything in the Greedo layer that ain't Greedo. This is accomplished with a Layer Mask (Layer> Add Layer Mask> Reveal All). Once the mask is on there use an small black airbrush to erase the background and body. Only a floating disembodied head should remain. The sparkling beauty of a Layer Mask is that you can fill-in the areas you didn't mean to erase by flipping the airbrush color over to white.
	Step 5. Rotate Besides resizing, most Source images will require some rotating (edit> transform> rotate), or even horizontal flipping (edit> tranform> flip horizontal). Here Greedo's head needs to be rotated a bit for a more natural fit onto his new shoulders. Eyeball that bad boy until it looks right and apply the rotation. Proceeding on after Step 5 is what separates the men from the boys - all about th' fine details from here to the sea...
	Step 6. Mask and Repeat Once rotated and moved into place the layer mask should be touched up to account for folds in clothing, hair, or other obstructions. In this instance some of the neckline was brushed-out so it appears as though the background-layer shoulder is in the foreground, in front of the head layer.
	Step 7. "The Weed of crime bears bitter fruit" Next select the Greedo layer (entire head) and use the airbrush to apply a slight shadow in the neck area. Airbrush pressure set to about 30% with a large feathered brush. For number one lucky results, don't actually place the brush in the selected area, instead brush just outside the selection line and let the unseen feathered portion of the brush darken the target.
	Step 8. Details Even with the neck shadow, our man Greedo still doesn't quite fit in with his new buddies. Play with the Brightness/Contrast (image> adjust> brightness/contrast) until the overall head tones better match his surroundings. This particular job called for Brightness -25 and Contrast +15.
	Step 9. Details Like a hearty broccoli, Rodians are indeed green - but Greedo here is sporting a bright alien green that just won't pass in this "realistic" environment. Dumb down the green by adjusting the Hue/Saturation (image> adjust> Hue/Saturation). We knocked off about 50% of the saturation here.
	Step 10. And More Details The Source image was a little over exposed to start with, which washed out some of those dapper facial features. We also shrunk that image quite a bit, which only made things worse (in the detail department). Use the Dodge and Burn tools to bring out highlights and enhance dark areas. Here we enhanced the circles around his eyes, gave a shadow to the area behind his ear, and dappled a bit on that funky bumpy area towards the back of his head.
	Step 11. Das Beste ist Gut Genug Finishing touches can include very light use of the Blur tool (set to about 30% pressure) to take the hard edge off the line where his neck meets the shoulders. Also blurred the edge along the back of his head just slightly for a heightened sense of depth. When complete, you can even hide some of imperfections by shrinking the image to about 85%...