Fill a Photo with Photos

Fill a Photo with Photos

BUILDING A PHOTO MONTAGE
(Filling a Photo with Smaller Photos)

This assignment involves manipulating three separate photos so that two of them are used as the basis for the third. Along the way, we will cover some very useful Photoshop tools.

  1. Open Photoshop
  2. Open the photo you want to use to complete this assignment – for these instructions I will be filling the following photo

    with the following two photos

    get it…yeah, you get it…
  3. First thing we need to do is crop the main photo so that all we have left is the most important part of the image – in this case it means being left only with Anakin and Padme’s heads, so click the Rectangle Marquee Tool
  4. Press and hold the Shift key and click and drag to create a box around the main part of the image

    keep in mind that you can reposition the selection box by holding down the spacebar as you drag
  5. To remove the unwanted area click Image then click Crop which will leave you only with your selection
  6. Press Ctrl+D to deselect our image
  7. Let’s work with the smaller photos to get them to the correct size – we will be using the crop tool this time so click the Crop Tool
  8. In the Crop Tool options bar change the Width and Height to 25px each

the settings for you Width and Height will vary depending on the size of your original image, if you have a larger image you will want to use a larger pixel setting – my image of Darth Vader is 450 pixels wide, so a setting of 25 pixels will work fine

  1. Click and drag to create a selection area in your first small image – there is no need to press Shift this time because inputting the same Width and Height values means the selection will automatically be a square (keep in mind that if you need to reposition the selection square while dragging it you can press the spacebar)

    once you have made the selection, you can use any of the four resize handles to change the size of the image, or you can reposition the entire box by clicking inside of it and dragging – when you are happy with your box press Enter, you should now have a little tiny image
  2. Repeat the above process on the other small photo
  3. Click File then click New
  4. We want a new file that is twice as wide as our two small images, so enter in a Width and Height that is double what you resized your smaller images to

    my smaller images are 25 pixels each, so my Width and Height need to be 50 pixels
  5. Click OK
  6. Click the Move Tool
  7. Click inside your first small photo and drag it into the new document, then position it in the upper-left hand corner of the document
  8. Repeat the above process, but this time place the photo in the lower-right hand corner
  9. Now drag the second small photo into the new document twice and place it in the bottom-left and upper-right corners
  10. You should now have four different layers with small pictures on them, so let’s get them all into one layer by clicking the layer menu button and then click Flatten Image

    you should now have only one layer
  11. Click Image then point at Adjustments and click Desaturate

    this will remove the color from your image
  12. Click Edit then click Define Patter
  13. Name the patter smallpics and click OK

    while it looks like nothing has happened, in fact your images are now defined as a Photoshop pattern that can be used to fill a selection…let’s keep going to see how…
  14. Close all of the image you have open except your original, large image
  15. Click the New Layer icon at the bottom of the layer palette

    Photoshop automatically creates a new blank layer
  16. Make sure the new layer is selected and click Edit then click Fill to open the Fill window
  17. Make sure the Use option is set to Pattern, Blending Mode is set to Normal, and Opacity is set to 100%
  18. Click the Custom Pattern drop-down arrow and select your pattern – is will be the last thumbnail
  19. Click OK – Photoshop will fill the layer with your pattern
  20. To get our pattern to blend into the original image, click the layer blending mode drop-down arrow and select Overlay
  21. Your image should now look like this…
  22. Depending on the small images you used and the brightness of your original image, you may have a rather severe image, you can soften this up just a bit by changing the layer’s blending mode to Soft Light, which will give you something like the image below…

    by the way, you can also lower the intensity of the smaller images by lowering the opacity of the top layer – try it and see if you like the result
  23. Save your image in your personal folder as fillphoto_yourname

O’Kilen

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