Photo collage scrapbook layout

January 28, 2008

Capture the moment in a photo collage

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In what has become a tradition for us (three times in a row makes it a tradition, right?), Allan and I celebrated Australia Day by taking a cooler bag with wine and snacks down to a tranquil waterside spot (this year it was Norman’s Reserve by the Yarra River) and chilling out with some relaxing music and some compatible wildlife.

The duck was an entertaining and friendly companion and the music of the kookaburras in the trees made a perfect backdrop. Allan had scrounged a plastic Australian flag from Bunnings and we stuck it in the ground to maintain the patriotic spirit.

I decided to create this collage to bring together the tranquil images of the afternoon into a single image. At first glance this may look like a photo which has been blended into the background but if you look closely you will see that it’s actually three different photos blended together.

It was really easy to do. Here’s how:

As all three photos have the river as a common background, blending them together just required layering them on top of each other and then using the eraser with a brush that was an irregular shape.

I made the brush quite large (about 500 px) and first clicked roughly around the edges of each photo at 100% opacity to take the straight edge off.
Then reducing the opacity to 50% I started to erase the edges again using a clicking action rather than a dragging action.
I then reduced the opacity once more to about 20% and went around again, concentrating on the areas where the photos overlapped so as to blend them into each other.
Once I was satisfied with the look, I linked the layers together and merged them into one layer.

If you’re interested in trying this yourself, I wrote a more detailed tutorial on how to make a photo collage layout a couple of months ago. You might like to check it out.

And by the way, I was very pleased at how the three stars on the flag arranged themselves so conveniently to form a visual triangle around the photo. Good luck rather than good management I assure you.

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