The goal of the first photoshop tutorial was to blend an image with another, in this example the eagle and the flag are blended together in order to give the idea of a single component, it is not a hard technique but still very effective
In the second tutorial we learned how to isolate a frame of an image and to modify the background in order to demphasize it. This gives the idea of a frame taken form the picture focusing the eye only on that portion.
In this example is shown how the use of clipping mask can help us to obtain this particular effect of an object inside another. It is really quick and relatively simple, the most important aspect is to choose the "right" images to make it seems "real".
In this photo I created the border of the advertisment using vectors in photoshop, this technique is good to obtain rounded precise rounded shapes really easily using anchor points and modifying the degree of the arch
photoshop improvement of images
