How to Create a Collage in Photoshop

Make original, creative art pieces from your picture stash

Photo Montage by Matthew Bamberg

Who doesn’t like photo collages (or montages)? These art pieces are perfect for using photo collections you have of similar themes, subjects, and/or objects. Photo collages can be created any way you want.

Originally, the montage above was a full-page spread of retro cars that I shot throughout Palm Springs, California. I framed it and gave it to my nephews. Since I enjoy experimenting with my images in Photoshop, I thought it would be cool to transform the photograph collection of retro cars into the shape of a car.

Lookout from Window. Photo montage by Matthew Bamberg

Photoshop is my ultimate escape after taking pictures. I had a collection of windows that I wanted to use to make a photo montage. You can create photomontages by using photographs with similar themes, subjects, or objects. Photoshop is the ideal tool for creating them.

My Google Drive is filled with photo sets. Yet that’s another story. In the image above, a series of windows is arranged in a matrix to form a faux building. Each is a black-and-white window that I assembled in Photoshop. The surreal effect of different window designs, I thought, was a clever idea, one anyone can emulate.

In this piece, I wanted a woman in the window. I found a picture of one that I took on an Alaska cruise. Walking around the port city, I encountered a woman who was luring people into a museum of Alaskan memorabilia. I asked permission to take her picture. I had no idea what I’d use it for.

I went into the museum. The furnishings of the house matched the woman’s outfit. The design appeared to be from the Yukon Gold Rush days, which took place at the turn of the last century. Luckily, her vintage outfit matched the building I constructed in Photoshop.

Inside one of the windows, a woman is appropriately placed one-third from the right frame of the photo. What makes her stand out even more is that I included her color photo among the black and white windows.

You can make a photo montage using layers in Photoshop.

Photoshopping a Photo Montage

Using Photoshop or Elements, you can make almost any photo montage you want. I went for a matrix of windows because I have a collection of window images. Rodchenko did one of the animals where one animal was piled on top of another diagonally across the page.

To do the window montage:

I first opened each image window and used the Distort (Edit > Transform > Distort) option to make the converging lines vertical.

Next, I created a new document (6X9 at 300 dpi) and made it grayscale (Image > Mode > Grayscale). Because I selected that option, each window image I drag into the new document will automatically turn black and white.

I opened each image window and pasted it from the open document to the new one. I then selected each image and scaled it down (chose Edit > Transform > Scale and then clicked and dragged the image inward) to approximately where I wanted it.

After I was finished with all of the images, I opened the Layers palette. From there, I tweaked each window so it fit with the one below and beside it, so there was no whitespace between them.

Finally, I inserted the woman in the same way: I opened her image, selected her with the Polygonal Lasso tool, and then copied and pasted her from the document I was working on into the new document. She’s in color in the collage. I had to be careful for her size to match the window she was looking out.

That’s it — don’t forget to flatten your image (Layer > Flatten Image) when you’re finished.