How To Create A Collage In Photoshop

Okay, so I'm thinking the collage that I'm going to create today is going to be a selection of images that I took at a gig a couple of years ago. So, what I'm going to do, here are my images that I've got selected, that I want to put in this collage. So, I'm going to click and drag over all my images. Then, I'm going to right click at the top and open with Adobe Photoshop. Now, Photoshop is going to go through and open the images. It's going to create them in this tool bar on the top here. So, here we go, here's a picture of Lethal Beagle performing, performing live. Now, you may want to open each picture individually, depending on your machine. This happens to be quite a fast machine, so, you can have as many fast images as you want open, but if you've got a slightly slower machine, take one image at a time. Then it will not crash your laptop. So, what I am going to do is create my initial canvas which is where I'm going to put all my images onto. So, in order to do that, I'm going to use the shortcut which is, I find the shortcut is the easiest way to work, holding down Apple, pressing, and this is giving me this new window here. I'm going to get to my preset 'International Paper' just because I find that easier. And I'm going to select an A3 size picture; again, it doesn't really matter how big or small you want to go. Now, because these images are of a quite high quality, if I keep the resolution at 300, you're not going to reduce the quality of the images. So, that'll be okay. So, now, you can see we've got a completely blank white canvas here, ready for your pictures. So, now, what I'm going to get to do is I'm going to now take each layer as I have here. You might not use that English, it's not so good, or that one, see that glow. And, I'm going to drop them onto this white page. So, along this toolbar up here, I'm going to click on the image that I want to move across so we can see it there in full. So, if one of the images we have selected here, if we want to move it from this palette here to our blank white canvas, so clicking on the image again in the toolbar along the top, we're going to right click on the background image, select duplicate layer. Now, we're working with a collage of pictures, it's best to manualize because if you have hundreds of layers, you can never find anything again, and it's frustrating having to try to work out which layer is which. So, just for argument, say on this one, because this is Lethal Beagle performing, I'm going to call this pic here Bizzle 1. Then we want to change the destination of where the image is going, from the document, not the image that we are working with, but we want to send it to the Untitled 1 which is the white canvas we had earlier. So, that's selected, you hit okay, you'll now see that the image has been duplicated onto this one here. So, we can now go through doing exactly the same thing, so right clicking on the layer, hitting the duplicate layer, giving it a new name and changing the destination to our canvas. So, as you can see, that one has appeared on top of our image that we did previously. Just keep repeating this process until you finally have all your images in your required destination. Okay, so, now you've got a bit of a mess on your palette here. But what we're now going to do is we're going to move and manipulate the pictures, so you can arrange them a little bit more effectively on your page. So, the first couple of tools that should make your life a hell of a lot easier is the hand tool, which you have by holding down the space bar. You can move around the screen, so if you use the hand tool by holding down the space bar on your keyboard, you can maneuver your stuff around the image which makes stuff a hell of a lot easier. You can also use your zoom in and zoom out tool, the shortcut for that is Apple or Control on your keyboard and pressing plus or minus. So, we can zoom in and out. As you can see here, it's going to increase our layer palette size; you can see all of the images that I placed on the canvas. So, now, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go through, and I'm going to just roughly adjust the pictures so you can see them all, make them roughly overlap, make them sort of look basic make collage shape just so you can make a basic collage effect. Now, the simplest and quickest way to do that is with the image, that with you wish, that you wish to move around, if you make sure that you've got the right layer selected you press Apple or Control, holding that down on your keyboard and then press the letter T. It will give you these handles all the way around the outside of the image. If you mess around with these handles, you can now change the size or shape of your desired picture. If you hold down Shift, as you are doing this, it will move them more within proportion of itself, which I find is quite useful if instead of dropping down the first one from the ceiling, dropping down from the side into the left. So, holding down Apple or Control, and then press T, holding down Shift, then just readjust the size of the picture. You can also, if you maneuver, if you maneuver your mouse just off the edge of the handle, you can now rotate the image 360 degrees, however way you see fit. And, now, it's just a case of going around and doing this to all your set. So, once you've moved your image to where you want it to be, if you press Enter, they'll now leave that layer where you've left it. It's just a case now of next, just a case now of moving on to your next layer and moving the layers around, Apple - T, Control - T on PCs. Again, just pressing Apple - T or Control - T on your PC, holding down Shift so you move the image within proportion of itself, you can place your images wherever you see fit. Okay, last but not least, there we go, a very basic collage layout there. Now, the last thing to mention, is that you may decide that instead of having one of the images in the foreground that you prefer to have it in the background, so for example, this image here, I think, would look slightly better if it was on top of all the images. So, now, it's just a case of going through and finding your correct image. To do that, you can scroll through your images by clicking on the “I” icon and that just takes if from gig. So, this was the picture that I was referring to here. So, if you now feel that the picture would look better sitting on top of all the other pictures, you can move the layers around to change the sort of structure layer of each image. So, that's why the best way to think of this, so that's why you think of this as if you were making collage out of picture images on a canvas by hand. So, you would move pieces of paper on top of each other in order to get the desired effect that you wish to see. And, this is pretty much exactly the same process. All you need to do is click on the layer that you wish to move above all the others, and just do exactly that. Click and drag, and as you can see, we're moving the layer. Hop along to the top, and there we go. You might decide now that actually that wasn't a very good idea, so drop that back down, maybe a few layers and you can do this with any of the layers that you wish to achieve the desired effect. And that's how you create collages in Adobe Photoshop.