Layering photos (w/Photoshop, etc)

Cafe Society
1

Take a look at this Star Wars poster.

This poster is a painting, but let’s say I wanted to create a similiar image using actual photographs. I would want to cut out specific images from other pictures and arrange them like the poster. How would I do this?

I have Photoshop 5.0 LE, but I could download GIMP since I understand it has features much like Photoshop.

2

Very simply. No need to get GIMP since LE has layer functions.

Here’s the easiest method to do it:

  1. Fill your background layer with the color you want

  2. Take a photo, crop using the crop tool and/or lasso tools and/or eraser tools.

  3. Create a new layer, copy this photo over to the new layer and position where you want.

  4. Repeat 2 & 3 until you’ve got all the photos, each on their own layer, where you want them.

  5. Adjust brightness/contrast/color balance on individual layers until you make them all look like they belong together. Resize as necessary.

  6. Save your work as a .psd or .tiff with layers turned on.

  7. Export as you wish.

Voila, your own photo collage.

3

As Charman Pow said.

If you want to make the edges of the pictures indistinct and irregular, the next step is to take each photograph and add a ‘layer mask’ to its layer. The mask is a gray-scale image that is not visible directly, but serves to control the visibility of the image on the layer it is associated with.

The way it works in Photoshop is: the lighter the layer mask is, the more of the image being masked is visible.

:: fires up Photoshop to check ::

Yes. I open a photograph and make sure that it is on a layer that is not the backgrpund layer.

From the Layer menu, I select Add Layer Mask, Reveal All. A white square appears in the layers dialog box, associated with the image. The image appears unchaged. The Info box indicates that the foreground colour is white, and the backgropund colour black.

The outline of the layer mask is highlighted, indicating that when I paint on the image, I’m affecting the layer mask, not the contents of the image directly. This is important.

Since the layer mask is all white, the image is all visible.

I paint on the layer mask with shades of grey. As I use darker greys, the corresponding areas of the image become more and more invisible (i.e. transparent). Where I paint the layer mask with full black, the image becomes totally invisible, and whatever is behind it can be fully seen.

This technique is good for obscuring the edges of layered photographs and blending them into one another. :slight_smile: