Paste Into: putting a picture inside a selection

A view through a window, a photo on a phone screen in a mock-up, a pattern inside a lettering shape: all of these are one picture showing inside part of another. Paste Into is the quickest way to set that up in Paint by Zaweba. It turns a copy, a selection and a paste into a masked layer in a single command.

The command in practice

First copy the picture you want to place. Then, in the document you're working on, select the area it should appear in, say the glass of a window. Choose Edit > Paste Into, or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+V.

You get a new layer holding the pasted picture, centred on the selection, with a mask that shows it only inside the selected area. Paste Outside is the reverse: the mask shows the pasted picture everywhere except inside the selection, which is handy for putting a new background behind a subject you have selected.

The mask is unlinked from the layer's pixels. That's the useful part. You can move, scale or rotate the pasted picture while the mask stays still, so you slide the view around inside the window frame until it sits right.

Jobs it suits

Screen mock-ups are a natural fit. Select the screen of a phone or monitor in a photo, Paste Into a screenshot, then scale and position it. If the screen is at an angle, transform the pasted layer to match the perspective while the mask keeps it inside the screen.

Window views, picture frames on a wall, the label area on a bottle and text filled with a photo all work the same way. For text, select the letter shapes first, then Paste Into.

Paste Outside suits background swaps. Select a person or product, Paste Outside a new backdrop, and it lands behind them without covering them.

Making it look right

Match the light. A view through a window on a sunny day will look pasted in if the room is dim and warm. An adjustment layer clipped to the pasted layer, such as Levels or Curves, lets you bring its brightness and colour into line without affecting the rest.

Mind the edges. The mask is made from your selection, so a hard selection gives a hard edge. For glass, a slight softness often looks more natural; for a phone screen, a crisp edge is right. Since it's a mask, you can paint on it later or feather it.

Add a reflection or glare if the surface would have one. A low opacity layer of white above a screen can make it look like glass rather than a sticker.

Pitfalls when pasting in

Moving the mask with the picture by accident is the usual one. Because the mask is unlinked, make sure you have the layer's pixels active, not the mask, when you move. If the window outline moves, undo and select the pixels.

Pasting something too small is another. The pasted layer is centred on the selection at its own size. If it doesn't fill the area, scale it up, but a small picture enlarged a lot will look soft. Copy from a larger original when you can.

And remember that nothing is lost. The pasted picture is whole on its layer; the mask just hides part of it. If you later want to shift the view or change the shape, edit the mask or move the layer.

Paste Into is a small command that removes several fiddly steps, and once you know it's there it becomes the obvious way to fit one picture into another.