Sftening Edges of Layered Paste

I am sure this is a simple thing to do but ... I am trying to copy and paste or to cut and move one image onto another. For example, say the background is a scenery photo showing lots of sky. If I move a new picture or a bird flying into the sky in the background it LOOKS pasted on top. I am sure there is some way of blending the edges a tiny bit to make it look more seemless but have not suceeded in finding it yet. I can put a spot of color into the sky then soften the edges ... but not soften edges of an added image that may have multiple colors. Thanks for any help.

You can soften the edges by applying a feather to a selection before cutting/copying.

With the selection active, go Select > Feather, then choose a Feather radius, 1 pixel should probably be enough. Then CTRL + J to copy the selection to a new layer. Then with the new layer active, drag the selection into the new image with the Move tool.

I have tried that and expected it would work, but so far it does not seem to do anything. guess I just need to keep experimenting with different #s of pixels Today for example, after reading another post here about making borders, I was playing around with a recent pic of the grandkids. It is particularly good pose for 2 of the 3 ... and another pic file has a nice pose for the 3rd kid. So I want to move his head in the good pose onto the one that is good of his brother and sister. But no matter what I did, it LOOKS like I pasted his head over the top. It aligns and looks good otherwise, just the edges are too "hard". Thanks. I'll keep trying.

If the feather doesn't give you what you want, you could try the Blur tool :-

When your head is positioned, select Blur tool, set brush to a small size and low opacity and paint round the outline of the head to blur the edges into the background.

Without seeing the image, it's hard to say, but there are things other than the edges that may be stopping the head blending in. Things to look for are different brightness, contrast, lighting, skin colour, sharpness, graininess of image . All these things can be tweaked to help the head look more at home.

Good stuff Wano.

In this particular case, the blur tool was more effective than the feather. Since I had three poses in pretty much precisely the same place, same lighting conditions, etc, moving the head from one photo to the other did not present sizing or lighting problems that might plague other such editing. Thanks for the good advice. In other situations, I wll continue to try the "feather" option.