Photoshop Composite Tutorial

Please watch this video again if you need to (or if you didn't see it yesterday).


Your assignment:

1. Find 3 different photographs in google images. (Note: try to find images approximately the same size. You can see the size by hovering over them with your cursor - you will see a number x another number that looks like this 1600x1200. Those are the number of pixels. Just try to get images that have at least one of the dimensions over 1000 pixels.

2. Save these photographs by clicking on them from the search page and then right click to Save Image As - make sure you save them into your TIJ folder that you should by now have made in your home drive.

3. Open up Photoshop CS6. From there open up each of the three photographs. You will see three tabs across the top of your Photoshop window (just like in the video).

4. Using the Move tool - pictured at the top of the A panel of tools - it's the one right at the top of the tool panel in Photoshop - grab anywhere in one of the images and pull it up onto one of the other tabs. Don't let go until you've centered it over that image. You can press Shift to place it exactly on top of the image.

5. Now you should have one file with two layers (and two images). Repeat this until you have all three images in one file. You can close the other tabs now.

6. Decide which one will be your base image and which ones will go on top. You can then begin erasing parts of the images on top to reveal the images underneath. Make sure you only erase the parts you want to. In the next few days I'll show you how to do this without damaging the images, so if you make a mistake you can easily fix it. For now, just go as carefully as you can.

7. Things to remember.

• You can only do things to a layer if that layer is highlighted. So click on that layer in the layers panel to highlight it. Otherwise you'll be erasing the wrong layer.
• You can adjust the opacity if you want part of the base image to be seen through one of the other images. That's up to you, however you want it to look.
• Save your finished image as a psd. Put your name in the file name and call it Name_Composite1.psd. Then put it into the drop off folder.
• The eraser tool is the 5th tool down on the B tool panel above. You can change the size of the erase by using the right and left Square Brackets on your keypad. Or by changing the brush size and hardness on the top menu bar once you've selected the eraser.
• You can resize any image by selecting Edit (on the top menu) and Free Transform. OR CTRL T (keyboard shortcut). That will give you a bounding box. You MUST grab by the corner while pressing SHIFT while you resize the image, otherwise you will distort it (make it too wide or too tall). You can also press ALT at the same time to keep it centered.
• Have fun! I'll be back tomorrow to help you with anything and to check your work.