How to Make a Collage in Adobe Photoshop

Video Transcript

"Here we're going to look at how to make a collage in Photoshop, something that's really easily done and just will take a little practice. But, in this example, we're going to do "file new". And, we're going to give ourselves plenty of space. And since I know that this is going to be printed out on an eight and a half by eleven piece of paper for a poster we're doing, I'm going to choose "letter", and with the resolution at three hundred so that we get the highest quality image when we're done. So that gives us our white canvas, where we can choose "file and place", and I've already got some images lined up, here. Now, when you do file-place, it brings it right into the document. So, that's our first image, and then we'll file-place and dig up the other ones. And, there we go. We've got a variety of images, here. Now, you notice that they're all on their own layers, and they can be shown or hidden. And the way that Photoshop works is that whatever is on top of the stack of layers is what's going to show. So, if things are hiding, try dragging what's hiding underneath the other layers, and they should appear. In general, when you open up Photoshop, you don't get what I was just looking at, which was that "show transform controls" box. And that can be really helpful, because instead of having to enter "transform mode" you're already in transform mode in a way, 'cause you can rotate your objects. And, if we've also checked "auto-select layer", you can switch between your layers in the collage much easier just by checking that off. So make sure to do that. And, we've got the beginnings of a collage, here. You can certainly change the way that....the scale, just by clicking and dragging in a diagonal way and holding down the shift key. And that'll scale up your graphic. In this case I want to remove that white background, so using the magic wand tool, I'm going to magic wand the white on his layer and hit delete. But you'll notice when I click on it and try to delete it, it tells us that it can't be edited because we did "file-place", and it's a smart object that can be scaled as a result of that file-place action. So, what we need to do to get rid of that is, with the layer selected, go to the layer menu and choose "rasterize smart object". That means we're not going to be able to scale it up without a loss of quality. But it also means that now, with it selected, we can erase that white background. And, we've got the beginnings of our collage. Should you want to add a little depth to your collage, select a layer and then choose the small "f" in the palette, the layers palette. And, drop shadow's a great way to add depth to your collage. And, that is how you make a collage in Photoshop."