Single US/UK Flag with diagonal alpha in Photoshop?

[JAB Creations]

I'd like to make a flag that is half US (top left corner) and half UK (bottom right) with a blended fade between them from the bottom left corner to the top right. I have no clue how to do this though I have a relatively good amount of experience in Photoshop.

- John

[appi2]

Make two layers
Put the us flag on the top layer and the uk flag on the bottom layer.
Select the top layer (us flag)
Now use the polygon lasso tool and draw the diagonal, make this diagonal longer than the diagonal of the flag and go around the right side of the flag. Leaving enough room for the feather you will apply next.

On the menu bar click select and refine edge (thats if you have CS3) use the controls to feather/grow shrink the select.
If you dont have cs3 I think feather/grow shrink are on the menu.

Now click delete on your keyboard.
clean up, if need with the eraser tool

something like that ;)

[JAB Creations]

Thanks, that helped a tremendously. The polygonal lasso and select->refine edge were key to achieving the effect I wanted. :)

- John

[vincevincevince]

Just be careful; you'll be infringing the US Flag Code by putting another flag on top of part of the US one!

[JAB Creations]

Infringing the US flag? It's a symbol to help identify a site as using the English by default.

- John

[travelin cat]

OMG, now we have to worry about the flag police.

[jelle76]

Hm.. How about the copyright on the flag :D

[rocknbil]

Well, I would have done this differently. :-) The selection tools limit the amount of feather you can use, if you need something wider or more gradual this approach works well.

Many don't realize a channel can be used to save selections. So, with the two layers in place, create a new channel. Go into that channel and create a gradient on the diagonal, it will be only in black and white grayscale.

Now go back into RGB and select Select->Load Selection from the main menu. In this dialog box, select the channel you just created (Alpha 1 if you didn't rename it.) This will load the channel's gradient as a selection. Now press delete. :-)

Don't forget to delete the channel before trying to save or you'll only get .psd or .png as the formats.