You will need to start with backgrounds that have as nearly identical lighting conditions as possible to the images of your granddaughter (it will take a professional to use anything else). Then you will need to practice "Selection" and "Feathering" of your granddaughter’s image to get the edges of it to have the same level of blurring/feathering as the background image has in it’s natural unadjusted state. Then you will need to very carefully balance the color, brightness, and contrast levels of both images to get them as close as possible to being equal. Understanding "Layering" techniques, ie how to place the image of your granddaughter on top of the image of your background, and to "Position/Adjust/Transform" it so that her size and placement looks natural on/in the background is also very important and will take some practice to get it to work for you. Practice, practice, practice, is what this project will take the most of. Shadowing is only a very small part of the job.
Charley
"DotCom" wrote in message
I am taking images of my granddaughter that I have cut out of photos and pasted them on pretty backgrounds but they always look superimposed. I
have
tried feathering the edge and/or adding a drop shadow but it still looks "done". Any tips for a new PSE v.6 user?
Thanks