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Photoshop Tutorial: Creating a Simple Collage Effect

By Bonnie Creevy, published Nov 30, 2006
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One of my favorite things to create in Photoshop is a collage. A collage is basically several photos put together to create one big picture. You can make collages with tons of small pictures overlapping, or more simple ones with just one or two pictures. In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to create a simple collage effect with just a few pictures.

To start with you will need a few pictures. You can place these photos onto a plain background, or you can use another photo as your background. In this example, I am going to use a picture as the background (see picture: 1). So open up your background or picture. Go to File, Open and browse to find the picture that you want. Next, open up another picture which will go on top of the background.

Use the Move tool on the left tool bar and click on the new picture and then drag it over your back ground. This will place the photo on top onto a new layer. Make sure that the new layer is selected by clicking on that layer in the layer palette. If you do not you're your layer palette open, open it by going to Window (up top) and selecting Layer. Now we need to resize and move this new photo to position it exactly where you want it.

Go to Edit and then select Free Transform. Hold down the Shift key and drag the corner of the photo to resize it (holding down the shift key will keep the photo proportioned). Use the move tool to slide the picture around to where you would like it. You can move the curser to the edges of the photo to get an icon that will allow you to rotate the photo if you like (see picture: 2). Once you have it positioned well, double click inside the photo to set it.

Now we are going to add some nice effects to make the photo stand out more. Let's begin by adding a small border. Again, make sure you are working on the new photo's layer and not the background. Go to Layer (up top) and then Layer Styles and select Stroke. You can use whatever color and size you like. For this tutorial I used a medium grey color and made a very thin border(see picture: 3).

Photoshop Tutorial: Creating a Simple Collage Effect
Photoshop Tutorial: Creating a Simple Collage Effect

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Credit: Bonnie Creevy

Copyright: Bonnie Creevy

Takeaways
  • Photoshop is a great tool for creating collage effects.
  • Collages can vary by using only one or two pictures or creating full spread collages with hundreds o
  • You can get very creative once you have the basics!
Did You Know?
Photoshop is a great tool for creating collages and other effects.
Comments
Comments 1 - 9 of 9
 
 
thanks i was having a brain FART!!!!!!!!!!

Posted on 10/04/2007 at 11:10:00 AM

 
i was having a brain fart

Posted on 10/04/2007 at 11:10:00 AM

 
Thanks so much!!! That was soooo easy with your instructions. I was trying to make it way harder than it needed to be.

Posted on 09/07/2007 at 8:09:00 PM

 
Perfect! Was having a brainfart, very helpful refresher.

Posted on 08/30/2007 at 12:08:00 PM

 
Thanks! I was having a brain fart and couldn't remember how to do this. Very helpful.

Posted on 08/30/2007 at 11:08:00 AM

 
its gud would have been better with pix nice job ne ways

Posted on 08/09/2007 at 4:08:00 AM

 
This is great.I am just starting out with Photoshop and this was a huge help.Thanks

Posted on 03/09/2007 at 12:03:00 PM

 
nice tutorial i will try this one

Posted on 01/21/2007 at 8:01:00 AM

 
informative

Posted on 11/30/2006 at 9:11:00 PM

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