As far as software tools are concerned, for the edits we want to perform here we could use any one of a number of high-quality post-production applications, a list of which would probably include Nuke (from The Foundry), Fusion (by eyeon Software), Composite (from Autodesk), or indeed the compositor mode that is built into the freely available Blender application.

For sheer ease of use though, we will make use of Adobe's After Effects package. This means that while the steps we take here are of course being applied to single images, we could just as easily apply them to an animated sequence and have the end result turn out exactly the same.