Tutorial – Creating a Montage of Photographs in Photoshop Elements

Here is my method for creating the montage below:

1. Go to the File Menu, select New, then Blank File.  Name the project and enter the size you want in inches.
2. If you want the background to be black, make sure that the colors on the tool palette are set to Black & White (hit D for Default).  We’ll use black in this example.
3. Click on the paint can tool (shortcut is K), then click on the new file you created.  It should fill itself in with black.
4. Open all the pictures you want to appear in your montage.  Make sure that the Photo Bin at the bottom of your screen is displaying all your pictures.
5. With the new black file active, drag a picture that you want from the bin onto the black montage.  You can use the corner boxes to resize the new picture.  I first dragged all mine into the top left corner so that I could use the rulers to size all photos to the same size, then moved the picture to the appropriate spot.
6. Once you have all the pictures positioned approximately where you want them, you can align them exactly.  Make sure your Move Tool is active (press V), select the pictures you want aligned, and use the align menu at the top of the screen.
7. At this point, select the layer of any image that you need to modify.  This project will look best by making sure the color tone is about the same from image to image.  You can also standardize the background of each picture, vignetting, and possibly the crop level.
8. I put a thin frame around each image by going to the Content Palette, filtering by Frame type, and selecting the Gray Medium1 10 pixel frame.
9. Any questions?  Improvements?  I’m here for you.  Post a comment and I’ll help.

Here is my final result:

My Favorite Things - Montage created in Photoshop Elements