Hey Rooster!
You're asking for a lot... I've been editing pictures since I was a little kid and I'm still learning how do just that everytime I make a new one. The key is making sure you know all the selection tools at your disposal and getting a feel for which to use when, through lots of practice. I can't help you specifically, cuz I've been using Corel Photo-Paint all this time, and I'm pretty sure I'm one of the few on this website. But like soup said, once you got your selection, feathering is the key to blending it with the new background. The cloning tool also helps a loads in certain circumstances.
If you got any specific questions(for example two pictures to blend), let me know (or show them to me) and I'll see what I can do.
> Add your foreground layer
> Layer menu: add layer mask; 'Reveal all'
> select airbrush (very soft large brush if you want a subtle effect) [ensure you have a dark colour in your swatch]
> click on the new layer mask and start airbrushing, which will make those areas transparent.
By doing it this way you retain all your image data (no erasure) and you can easily replace areas by airbrushing white on the mask instead of black.
Tip: always remember to click the mask again or you'll airbrush your image layer.
There are many ways to do it, but I normally use one of two ways more often than not.
The first involves painting the background you want removed from the foreground with white and then using the lasso on it so the foreground item is selected. Once selected copy and paste it into the new background image. If you want a shadow cast from the new foreground it's best to do that with the layer options first. Then clone around the foreground to clean it up.
Another way would be to ensure that both foreground and background images are the same size and clone the background into the foreground image.
This is what I ended up doing. I layered the FG on top of the BG & then erased the parts rom the FG layer to reveal the BG layer. It was tedious but I found it to be easier than the suggested techniques.
you might want to try bluring a bit as well.. or feathering..like in the dragons mouth it is a VERY sharp line between dragon and sky... which does not happen in a picture.. you should smooth some of those out i think. the clay and the spine are a little sharp as well. If you use the blur tool, you can just blur right on the edge where you want.. it works pretty good.
