‘The camera never lies’, the old adage goes. Well, thanks to Photoshop and its ilk, today’s images can lie a lot and what’s more be quite amusing in the process. So whether you want to give George Bush a monkey body (surely no one has ever done that before) or put some clothes on Jodie Marsh, here are a few guidelines to make it as straight forward as possible.

The hardware

The first thing your going to need is a computer that has enough processing power to run an image editing programme. Most PCs nowadays should be fine but it’s worth checking.

If you want to do stuff with original pictures, you'll need a digital camera. Most advanced mobile phones should have enough quality to provide what you need. You should find instructions with your camera or phone on how to import the pictures you take on to your computer - some zap it via infrared and many will use a USB cable.

DO:

• Take a picture with your digital camera or phone camera
• Scan in a photo (or have the developer give you digital copies on CD
• Use an image from the Comedy Soup library
• Use images from any of the recommended public domain or Creative Commons libraries

DO NOT

• Use Google image search (or similar) and nick stuff from the internet
• Take an image from any other part of the BBC website
• Post an embarrassing photo of your friends/family/colleagues

Software

Probably the best known programme for image manipulation is Adobe Photoshop. It's expensive so it's worth bearing in mind alternatives.

First off there is a downgraded version called Photoshop Elements. It has all the basic features you’ll need for photo manipulation at a fraction of the cost of Photoshop.

If the Photoshop Elements is still out of your budget range then try GIMP. No, this has nothing to do with Pulp Fiction. GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It's a freely distributed piece of software for tasks such as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It's very similar to Photoshop, and is an excellent piece of kit.

Photography

Whether you using an advanced mobile phone or a digital camera its worth knowing your settings. Make sure when taking your pictures to use a high mega pixel setting to allow you to shrink it down after manipulation. It makes for a better final result.

Take plenty of shots. You should have plenty of space on a memory card so use it! It’ll save you having to do it again. Most modern cameras these days have digital viewfinder and allow you to have a look at your pics there and then so this shouldn’t be a problem. Its worth checking to make sure you’ve got everything you need in your image.

Compositing and image manipulation

Image compositing is a fun and useful technique for creating interesting images- the idea is to take two (or more...) images and combine them to make something new. So you'll need two source images that you want to combine. There is never one set technique, as different creations will have different requirements. But the following are some the techniques you can use to successfully manipulate an image.

1. Removing the background. For any successful composite image you will have to remove the background from one image. You can use the eraser, mask and selection tools for this.
2. Masks are a feature in just about all image editing software. If you've ever painted your house, you probably used masking tape to protect areas from getting paint on them. Masks in image editing software work almost the same way, only masks in your image editing software can provide varying levels of protection, allowing you to create soft fades or decorative edges.
3. Select tool. You can use the different type of select tool to alter certain parts of the image. Think outside of just using a square or a circle shape. Use the selection lasso to create any shape you need. You can also select by colour, and tone. When you have an object selected you can alter it using the variety of filters and image adjustments tools to change contrast, levels, colour balance etc.
4. Rebuilding an image. Often you’ll have to build part of an image if the source material you're using doesn’t provide you with everything you need. You can use a combination of the clone stamp tool (if you have it) and the select tool to create any parts of the image you need. The key here is to use multiple layers as you may need to blur or eraser out any edges, which give the game away.
5. Colour correction. This is one of the final stages of your composite image creation and one of the most important. Whereas someone's eye will often not pick up on slight proportion problems, people almost always spot tonal difference. For example if you are splicing someone's head onto a different body, getting both skin tones as similar as possible will help even a sloppy composite. Use the contrast, hue / saturation, curves and level settings (or similar) to get your tones right and you’ll be well on your way.
6. Tricks. Remember, you're not confined by any set structure. If the image doesn’t look right, flip it horizontally and see if it works. Secondly hide your work! The simplest way of doing this is by making the finished article 20 percent smaller. Your image manipulation will be a lot harder to spot on a smaller image. A slight Gaussian Blur will also help hide your work a lot, like the way artists use their fingers to smooth out lines in pastels and charcoal artwork. Finally if part of the image looks sharper or more defined than the rest use the filters to degrade it. Add some dust and scratches and noise.

File format and size

So you've made your image, what next? You need to submit it to Comedy Soup. Bear in mind that we ask that images are no larger in size than 1.5mb. We recommend that your final image is around 750px on the longest side, which shouldn't be too massive a file.

If you have a photo or something similar save it as a jpg. If your file is coming out as larger than 1.5mb, try saving it at a slightly lower quality. You should be able to get a good compromise between quality and file size.

If you have something blockier - just text, a graphic you've created or a cartoon type image, a gif file may be better. Again, if you find the file size is too larger, try reducing the number of colours you are saving.

You can find these methods of saving in the ‘Save for the Web’ setting under ‘File’ in Photoshop.

Unfortunately we can't accept animated gifs.