If you want to distort the image further there’s a great deal of ways. The blur  and smudge  tool (R/Shift+R) allow you to blur parts of the image or push parts of the image around. You can control just how much push by controlling the strength slider in the ‘Options panel’ (Img 15) Remember that when using any tool that involves a brush the square brackets ([ and ]) can increase and decrease the size of the brush, while shift+[ and shift+] changes the edge blur.
I’ll give you one more way to transform this head and then we’ll move on to color correction.
Under Filters>Liquify... and Filter>Distort>(any of them) are fun options to play around with. In general my advice is to avoid filters unless they’re absolutely necessary. There are some advanced techniques that can be done with them, but even the slightest use of most of them labels the artist an amateur. Don’t be that guy.
The options for color correcting are found under Image>Adjustments>(Lots ‘o options, many decent) (Img 16) I’ll go through a few of the options, but the easiest way to get to know them is simply by trying each one and playing around. With these and with filters any adjustments made are applied to your selected layer if nothing is selected and the selected part of the layer if something is. They can not be applied to more then one layer simultaneously (or if they can, I won't confuse you with that yet).
Levels (Image>Adjustments>Levels or Ctrl+L) allows you to edit how much darks, lights, and middle tones occupy the picture by moving the 5 sliders  .
Color Balance (Image>Adjustments>Color Balance or Ctrl+B) allows you to adjust the reds, greens, and blues of the dark tones, mid tones, and highlights.
Hue/Saturation (Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation or Ctrl+U) allows control over the hue, the contrast, and the saturation. It can be applied to a specific color range through the drop down at top.
Curves (Image>Adjustments>Curves or Ctrl+M Img 17) is my favorite and probably the most confusing and powerful. My advice, as always, is to play around with it.
I could go through other options, but these are the main ones I use, and you’ll get a lot more out of simply playing with the adjustment effects. I'm purposefully not describing exactly what each slider does even in the ones I mentioned because A) it would take up a bunch of space and B) they're fairly intuitive and well labeled.
In order for it not to look like faked colors the best approach is to make a great number of subtle changes some times on different copies of the same layer with varying opacities and layer modes for each of these duplicated layers. With practice you’ll start to get the hang of it.
But what if you adjust the color, work on another part of the picture and then decide the color adjustment done previously is no good? I’m glad you asked.
You can go into the history palette (Img 3) and hope you’re able to go back that far.
You can also drag the source image back into your photoshop document (before you made all those changes you did save the source image separately? Right? Good.) I’m sure you’ve cut the layer up a bit. To align the source image later and edited layer I’ll usually set the source image layer on 50% (5) and move it around (v) at a very zoomed in state (z) until the pixels match the layer below. Then I bring the opacity of the source image layer back up to 100% (0). If all you did was traced out a part of the edited layer you can Ctrl + Select the picture in the layer window which will give you a selection of the outline of that layer (neat trick, huh?). If you used a mask you can Ctrl+Select the map icon in the layers palette for the same result. Then select the source image layer in the layers palette and press delete, erasing the unwanted areas (you might need to invert the selection Ctrl+Shift+I) Ctrl +D deselects the selection and you can trash the originally poorly color corrected layer and try color correcting this new layer far better then before. (This time remember to make a duplicate which you turn the visiblity off on so you have a back up if the color correcting needs fixing later on).
Although I tried to do a decent job explaining there were 5 or so required steps and things got understandably hairy for what I'm labeling a beginner's tutorial. You’re still not satisfied and I understand. There is yet again a better way in the magic that is color adjustment layers.
Instead of adjusting colors through the Image>Adjustmentments drop down you select the layer in the layer's pallette and then click on the add color adjustment layer  at the middle of the bottom of the layers palette (Img 18). You get all the same options as in the Image>Adjustmentments drop down. Then go ahead and adjust away. This method has the added advantage/disadvantage of not affecting one layer, but instead affecting every layer below it. If you’d rather it affect only the layer directly below it simply Alt+Click on the bottom line of the color adjustment layer in the layer palette (mouse turns into  ) or press Alt+Ctrl+G with the adjustment layer selected. A mask is created so if you’d prefer you can paint out the parts of the color adjustment layer you don’t want it to be affecting. Go to my section on masks for further information. Basically, as a review, you click on the mask in the layer palette and whatever you paint white shows of the layer and whatever stays black does not.
You can stack as many color adjustment layers as you want on top of one another and always go back and refine your adjustments by double clicking on the layer.
The disadvantage of the color adjustment layers is they can quickly increase the number of layers you have, cluttering up the picture. They increase the file size and, quite frankly, are sometimes far more control then is needed.
If you’re perfectly happy with the coloring and want to get rid of the color adjustment layer, commit the change by simply merging it with the layer(s) below (Ctrl +E with both layers selected) This only works if the adjustment layer is only being applied to the layer below it. If it’s affecting all the layers then it’s simplest to just keep it there until all layers are merged at the end.
Each person is different, but in most cases I like to work broad color changes to small color changes. If I have a light picture and a dark picture I need to match I’d first deal with the Hue/Saturation (Ctrl+U), then probably Color Balance (Ctrl+B) and then some slight adjustments in Curves (Ctrl+M). If instead one layer is very green and another very red I’d start with color balance, then Contrast/Hue, and then Curves for those finishing touches.
I’ll generally use color adjustment layers so I can go back and forth between the different color adjustments and commit the changes by merging all the layers involved when I’m done.
So at this point you’ve brought your two images into photoshop, cut the head out of one of them, and adjusted the colors and size so it fits the first shape. Not only that, but I gave you half a dozen ways to do each step and you know what? You now know the fundamentals of photoshop. You can now combine any amount of images together to your hearts content. I tried to error on the side of over explaining and will make sure to answer all questions asked and rewrite this tutorial as needed.
Many times using only the techniques taught above I’ll find myself with a photoshop document with 100’s of layers that turn out quite nice. In fact, I don’t remember the last photohops picture I worked on that had fewer then 100.
There’s a few places you can go from here. The best course is to use this knowledge and have fun making a few images, mastering the hot keys and navigating around. Get good and fast at tracing, color correcting, and coming up with inventive ways of combining these steps in unique orders. Once you’ve done that I have some more tutorials if you want photoshop for a specialized use. You can read my advanced tutorial on how I assembled a complex digital collage scene. (Essentially pushing everything you’ve learned here to the limit – far further then you knew it could go.)
I have a tutorial on using photoshop to design a website from sketches to the finished look (and after that I have a tutorial on going from a static image into a fully working website for those wanting basic web design knowledge).
Next up is a photoshop painting tutorial. I go over the brush tool, but focus more on different techniques various photoshop painters use. I learned quite a bit in the creation of this tutorial.
My last photoshop tutuorial is a series of tips and tricks. There’s a little bit of overlap with previous tutorials, but mainly covers techniques most people don’t know how to use. It covers new CS3 features – animating in photoshop, filters, little used tools, actions, js options, and who knows what else.
As a bonus I also have a pdf cribsheet of the hotkeys you can print out.
If you read and digest all of these tutorials I have no doubt you’ll know the program as well as me, which is far better then anyone ever should.
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