Hi Gordon

the first part of the task is to do a virtual cut out of the kite, equivalent to using a pair of scissors or a stanley knife on a piece of paper. CS2 (I have cheap version PSE4) has a number of tools for doing this, but unless the bird is clear and sharp edged against a background of a totally different colour, it is safest to use the 'polygonal lasso tool' which is hidden in the main toolbox>lasso tool (which looks like a cowboys lasso), which you press and then go down to the polygonal option. This then works just like scissors cutting out the outline. When you have completed the selection, copy and paste which you will find takes it to a new layer. From the same source, there is the 'magnetic lasso' which allows you to follow an edge making fixed points at abrupt changes of direction or ambivalent positions en route.

I am one of the few mac users on the forum and for this I would prefer to use a very cheap programme called 'Color-it', in which the polygon works properly whereas the PS one tends to jump to where it thinks you want to go. If you find you have missed a feather tip firsttime, don't despair. You can add more pieces as you go along.

Lastly if like other mac users you are profoundly irritated by all the PS tool boxes, bins and general clutter, you can kill off the lot (1) drag the layers pallette away from the ones above it (2) open a file (3) press tab & this gets you the image and nothing but the image on screen. You then need to press the 'tools' and 'layers' windows in the window menu (could be a different menu in CS2) to reinstate those windows only. Likewise if you need tool settings, you may need to reinstate the 'tool options' bar.

See if you can get your kite out and selected. It is then a normal cut and paste onto the other image, except that in CS2 you may find it easier to do scaling and any other fine tuning in its home file next to the destination file before copy.(This is because if you are trying to do this in one layer over a background, you need a lot of 'layers' skills). In Color-it all the tools work on the selection only so you can paste first and do the scaling, lighter/darker etc against the destination background easily.

Do keep coming back for help as needed. The layers in PS are a pig, but are its strongest point and raison d'etre once you have got them sussed.