Lesson: Creating a collage using Adobe Photoshop

Follow the instructions to create a collage.

Tool box

Layers box

What you see above is the Photoshop main screen; observe the two important features which are the tool box and the layers box.

What you see below is the tool bar.

Lasso tool allows specific selection of parts of the image. Check out the magnetic lasso option

The Move tool allows for selecting objects and moving them. Rectangular Marquee tool allows selection of portions of the image.

Clone Stamp tool allows duplicating parts of the image.

Observe they are no layers currently

1. Open Adobe Photoshop and click on FileOpen (As seen in the image above)

2. Select the image from your folder (As seen above)

Observe a layer has been added

3. The image you selected will appear on the screen (as seen above) and you can see on the right hand side that this picture has been placed on a layer.

Rectangular marquee tool

4. Use the rectangular marquee tool to select a portion of the picture.

5. Go to Edit and select Copy.

6. Goto File New.

Preset option

7. A dialog box comes up as above, select international paper in the preset option and press OK button

8. Select Edit and click on Paste

9. The image previously selected and copied will appear on the new file. Observe it has been pasted in Layer 1.

10. Goto File Open, the box appears as seen above now select another picture you like and click on open.

11. Now use the Rectangular Marquee tool to select a portion of the picture you want to copy.

12. Goto Edit select copy

File where collage is being created

13. Select the file where you are creating the collage

14. Select Edit and click on Paste as seen above.

15. The picture will appear as seen above. Observe the Layers to the right the current picture has been pasted in a new layer.

16. Select the Layer in which your picture is sitting and use the move tool to move it to a position you like so that all the pictures are visible.

Layer with baby pic

Layer with Scooby pic

The bottom layer or the zero layer is always the background and all other images will be placed on the other top layers 1, 2, etc.

17. If you feel the picture is too big go to Edit free transform option. Look to the right, if you want to make changes to the dogs (Scooby) picture dont forget to select the layer on which Scoobys picture is sitting.

Drag the corners to make the image smaller

18. You can use the free transform tool and drag the edges to make the picture smaller.

19. A dialog box appears asking whether to apply transformation as above click on apply

You can repeat the copying and pasting for as many pictures you like for your collage.

20. When you are finished with the copying and pasting click on File save.

21. In the dialog box select the file format to be JPG and click on save option.

Extension Activities: Play Around with Photoshop and explore options in tool bar such as lasso tool and Clone stamp tool Clone Stamp tool: Allows duplicating a part of the image Lasso tool: Allows extracting parts of the image by selecting an area.
magnetic lasso option Try the