jamelah.net

I got an email today asking how I made a mosaic of pictures of my dog being a dork in the snow (she didn’t quite phrase it that way) and I started replying but wasn’t sure if a couple of the things I was explaining would make sense without seeing what I was talking about, so I made a few screenshots and turned it into a tutorial. I am using Photoshop Elements 6 but I’ve also used the regular non-elements Photoshop and the steps are basically the same. So here it is. Enjoy, or ignore, or whatever.

1. Choose the images you want to use, process them however you want to (levels, whatever), crop them square (hold down the shift key while dragging the cropping frame or use the handy Aspect Ratio thing at the top).

Resize all the images so that they’re the same (Alt+Ctrl+I for Image Size). For this I made them 400×400 pixels.

2. Create a new image (Ctrl+N). When asked what size you want it to be, make it a little bit bigger than necessary. Because I was making a 3×3 mosaic of 400px images, the smallest I could go would be 1200×1200. At this size, the images would all touch each other and the edges of the mosaic. I made my new image 1300×1300 to give it some breathing room.

3. Using the Move tool (the arrow), drag each of the images onto the new image:

Each image will be on its own layer. It doesn’t have to look like anything yet, and don’t worry about spacing because you’ll get to that later. Make sure you’re still on the Move tool and drag the layers around until you have them in the order you want them.

4. Zoom in. (Alt+Ctrl+0 for Actual Pixels) This is where you decide how much space you want between the individual images in the mosaic. I like to start in the upper left and get that intersection right before moving on. If Elements allows you to drag guides onto your image, I haven’t figured out how. I know that the full version of Photoshop allows this, though, so if you’re using some version of CS, you can use guides and the ruler to be really exact. I think in Elements you can still use the ruler but I don’t (I’m such a rebel!) I just get things where I want them by eyeballing the space and nudging the images in place with the arrow keys on my keyboard.

5. Once you have everything where you want it, crop the mosaic tight to the edges (If you used the handy Aspect Ratio thing when you were cropping all your photos for the mosaic in step 1, make sure you clear it before cropping so that there’s no restriction on the type of cropping frame you can drag. I said “cropping” way too much in that sentence.)

6. This step is optional. Select the Background layer in the Layers Palette. Use the Paint Bucket to fill it in with any color you want.

7. Create your border. First, be sure to toggle the colors you’re using by clicking that arrow or just hitting X on your keyboard

So that your border will be the same color as whatever you just filled your background with, otherwise you’ll be undoing and redoing this step. Once that’s done, go to Canvas Size and switch your unit of measurement to pixels (if you think in pixels like I do) and then make it as big as you want. You have to change both height & width because it will not constrain proportions.

Save it and you’re done. Whee!