Creating a montage

I've tried everything I know and a few approaches I've never used before and still can't come up with what I want. What I'm trying to do is use an image of the American flag as a background and then take an eagle image from another photograph, crop out the background and move the selection onto the flag image.

Either the result looks like a cutout placed on the flag or when I try to feather the edge or otherwise blend the two layers together the edges look blurred.

This is my first attempt at a montage such as this and I've run out of ideas to make it work and yet I've seen this done with very good results.

Rob
www.robhamanphotography.com

Rob - Sounds like basically the right approach to me (although I'm no expert). Can you post an example showing what you don't like about the results you're getting?

Have your flag on the background layer. Place the eagle on a layer above the flag. Resize the eagle layer so the eagle is the size you want. Before doing that set the eagle layer to an opacity of 50% so you can see through and make resizing most effective. Add a layer mask to the eagle layer. Draw around the eagle with a black brush to remove the area you don't want. Do this with the layer opacity at 100%. Vary the brush hardness to vary how the feathering looks. Trying to cut out a bird with feathers accurately is nearly impossible for anyone not familiar with channels so don't worry about trying to get the bird perfectly cut out. use a reasonably large brush with some arbitray softness. The larger and softer the brush settings the more feathered it will be. You can play around in the mask changing from black to white to your heart's content and it will be non-destructive. It's possible to cut the bird out with no feathering but it may be very difficult or impossible without resorting to channels.

http://www.russellbrown.com/tips_tech.html, scroll down to the bottom of the page and watch the tutorial on advanced masking.