Creating a collage

For the final project of the first part of the training, we’re going to make a collage from a collection of photos of a friend’s pets, using some of the pictures of Angelica we’ve edited today. In addition to the photos of Angelica we’ve edited, we’ll also incorporate photos of our friend’s cats, Eliza and Peggy. We’ll create a new document for the collage, then add all the images we want to include. Finally, we’ll move and resize the photos as desired to complete the process of making our collage.

NOTE: When creating a collage on your own, you’ll likely want to make sure all the images have been edited ahead of time so they look the way you want them to before placing them into the collage. For our purposes today, the extra images we’re using have been edited ahead of time so we can focus on making the collage.

Since we’ve only been opening existing files today, let’s take a moment to explore the New Document dialog box in Photoshop and some of the file characteristics we may need to pay attention to when creating a file.

The New Document dialog box looks like the following image:

The category tabs are across the top of the dialog box. The different categories contain presets for different types of files we might want to create. The list of presets for a specific category are displayed in the pane underneath the category tabs. We can select a preset by clicking on it, and if desired, we can modify its settings before creating a new file.

Next, we have the preset details pane — this contains the different options we can change when creating a new document. Selecting a preset will automatically set the values for these options, but we can adjust them if we need to. For example, we can adjust the width and height of an image, change the orientation to portrait or landscape, and even set the image’s resolution.

For today, we want to make a collage that will fit inside a 11x17 inch frame, so we’ll start by choosing a preset from the Print category for our new file. We’ll also change the page’s orientation from portrait to landscape before we finish creating the new document.

Now that we have a document to work with, we’re ready to start placing the individual images into the document.

Importing images using the Place command

We'll be using Photoshop's Place command to place the individual images into the collage document. We have two options for placing images — Place Embedded and Place Linked. Each of these options functions differently:

• • Place Embedded allows us to place an entire image into another Photoshop document. It is treated as a Smart Object, which means that the object is embedded right in the file itself. This creates a bigger file that doesn't rely on having the secondary image separately available.
  • Place Linked lets us place a link to an existing file into our Photoshop document. It makes it easier for us to update an image that might be used across a number of documents. Place Linked behaves similarly to how the Place command works in InDesign. To work properly, the secondary linked image must be available.

For today, we'll be using Place Embedded, as we won’t be using the images in other documents. Let's get started placing the individual files.

With the images now placed in the document, we’re ready to assemble the collage.

Resizing a placed image with the Scale command

The Scale command allows us to scale the contents of a selection or layer to whatever size we need. Activating the Scale command produces a bounding box around the object with handles on and between each corner. We can press and drag these handles to resize the object as needed.

We’ll practice this by resizing the image on the peggy-2 layer. As we resize the image, we’ll make use of the tooltip that appears when scaling an image to help us make the image the right size. The tooltip will look similar to what’s shown in the following image:

We’ll resize the other images in a moment — right now, let’s take a moment to explore some techniques for managing layers.

Managing and organizing layers

Working with complex images that contain many layers requires knowledge of some basic layer management techniques. Knowing how to reorder, hide, and move the contents of a layer can be helpful when working in Photoshop, especially with files that contain a lot of layers. 

Moving layer contents

Using the Move tool, it’s simple to move the contents of a layer. For the collage we’re working on, we’ll be moving the contents of each layer into a new position so each image can be seen. Let’s practice this by moving the contents of the Smiling layer, now that they’ve been resized.

Now we can see the some of the image that was underneath the one we just moved.

Rearranging layers in the Layers panel

As explained in the section Working with adjustments and layers, the layers in the Layers panel are stacked one atop the other. When we placed the images into the collage, the layers holding the images were stacked in the order we added the images to the file, with the last image we placed at the top of the layer stack.

We can use the stacking order of layers to affect how layers overlap each other. Let’s practice rearranging layers in the Layers panel, so we can choose how images overlap in our collage.

Now that this image is on top of the layer stack, it might be difficult to work with the other images in the collage since that image is obscuring the others. We can fix this by temporarily hiding the layer.

Hiding and showing layers

While we can move the contents of a layer out of the way to reveal the layer beneath it, there’s another way we can hide or reveal the contents of a layer: by using the layer visibility toggle. Clicking on the layer visibility toggle, which looks like an eye, will hide or show the contents of a layer.

Toggling a layer’s visibility can be helpful when we want to hide elements on other layers so we can focus on a specific part of the image, or view the effects of an adjustment and compare them to the original image. Let’s practice this by hiding the angelica-puppy layer for the time being — we’ll make it visible again once we’re done resizing and positioning the other layers.

The eye will disappear, indicating the layer is hidden.

When we’re ready to view the layer again, we can click the layer visibility toggle again and the layer will be revealed.

On your own: Resizing and positioning the other photos

At this point, we can resize and reposition the other photos in the collage. When working on assembling the collage, keep the following in mind:

• Don’t forget that you can turn the visibility of layers on and off as needed to see the other images.
• Some of the images may end up overlapping each other — and that’s okay. You can always reorder the layers in the Layers panel to change how the layers overlap each other.

Once you’re finished assembling the collage, save the file.

The following image shows one example of a finished collage: