What steps to follow to make a professional photo montage in Photoshop?
First of all, it is important to clarify that a photomontage is the process in which elements of a photo are added to another and are merged to create a single image. Thus, you can get photos with various elements that would otherwise be impossible to get.
This technique is very useful for obtaining surreal images, or for adding elements that were missing when the photo was captured.
Now, if you want to make a professional photo montage with Photoshop, you just need to follow the steps that we will explain below:
Select the elements for the photomontage
The first thing is to select the images that we will use for the photomontage. It is important to keep in mind that all pictures must have approximately the same resolution. Otherwise, changing the size and resolution to enlarge the image to fit the aspect ratio correctly may cause the image to be distorted.
After selecting the images, open them in the Photoshop program. You can open each image separately, or open them in layers in the image that will be the basis on which you will make the photomontage.
Before starting to manipulate the image, make sure you have "Show Transform Controls" and "Auto Select" enabled; This will allow us to manipulate images more comfortably on the canvas.
Remove the background from the elements to add
If you've selected items that contain a background, you'll need to remove it to add them. For this, you will have to familiarize yourself with the selection tools ; It can be selected rectangular, elliptical among others. Among the most useful and practical options we have the quick selection and perfect cropping in Photoshop or even using the magic wand.
To remove the solid color background from a photo, select the layer you want to work on. The next thing is to click on the background to identify what we want to hide or delete. We can check the tolerance level of the selection, which is the amount of similar color that will be taken into account to select in the image.
Instead of simply removing the background, we will go to the selection options and, after selecting the background, we will click on «Invert».
The next thing is add a mask to the layer, in this way we can select parts of the image and color them so that they are shown or hidden. If we color a part blank, that part will be shown; to hide it we will color the area black.
With images that don't have a solid background, what we're going to do is select the area we want to keep with the magic wand. Then we will apply a mask, where it will show us the areas that will be hidden; there we can make changes to refine the details. Next is to select «Output Settings», «Layer Mask».
This way, we will be able to see the result. Follow these steps with each image to remove the background as appropriate (solid background or not).
Correct image details
If there are some elements in the background image or base image that you want to remove, you can use the tool "Spot Healing Brush" in Photoshop. This tool is very useful because, automatically, the program supplants the pixels of what we want to eliminate from the pixels around it, managing to eliminate the unwanted element.
In order for all the elements to blend and acquire a more natural look, we can adjust the brightness, exposure, saturation, among other options. Note that the layers can be edited separately or together.
Once you are satisfied with the photomontage results, you can save the image with the extension you want, such as .JPEG or another.
As you will see, manipulating Photoshop can be simple if we know the usefulness of its tools. So, to make it easier for you to edit images or make photomontages with this program, we recommend that you use it constantly so that you become familiar with it and gradually discover everything it can offer.
