Successfully editing multiple photos in Photoshop

Editing multiple photos is not within everyone’s reach, especially if you’ve just started using Photoshop. Of course, there are websites that offer free tools for photomontages, but you need to know which ones and master them! Today, I’m going to show you some more or less advanced manipulations on Photoshop to easily succeed in editing yourself. So let’s begin!

Step 1: Find your pictures

Before starting a montage of several photos, you must have some idea of ​​the result you wish to see. This will be your guiding thread to prevent your creation from going astray. For instance, I want a visual to illustrate an article on Cooking and I already have in mind a sketch of the final result.

The first step of editing multiple photos with Photoshop is to find the images, even if you have to pick them here and there on the Internet. However, avoid gleaning pictures just anywhere. Preferably select copyrights-free photos (yes, they exist).

For this montage of several photos, I selected the photos below, including one on standby in the background.

Step 2: Removing a picture from its background

Go to Photoshop and start by opening the image you have chosen for the background. Here, since I’m talking about Cooking, I picked an image representing fire. For Cooking -you know? ;)

We will start by cutting the frying pan. Isolating part of a picture is simply detaching an object or a subject from its original graphical environment to modify it – on the side (if we can say it like that). For that, we use the magic wand tool (the tool to clip an image) of Photoshop, because the outlines of the pan stand out on a uniform background. You will just have to click on the white background and it will be automatically selected. Easy !

But (there is always a “but” xD) in case the image you want to crop is not on a uniform background (that is, it has a more contrasted outline), you can use the polygonal lasso tool. Moreover, it’s the tool we will mainly use for the rest of this tutorial…

How to use the lasso? Click a starting anchor point in your photo, place the pointer where you want the first segment to end, and click. Continue clicking to set the ends of the following segments, until you return to the starting anchor point.

Know that with the polygonal lasso tool, the more you make small segments, the more your selection will be precise (I found more explanation here xD) .

Now that the contours of our stove are well defined, click on “Delete” (on your keyboard) to eliminate the selected area and voila, the cut-out part will appear without the background. Now it’s ready for our little montage of several photos :-D.

After this operation, just remember to deselect the pan and for that, go to “Selection”, then click “Deselect”.

Step 3: Make the manual transformation

We will proceed with the manual transformation : this means that we can move the object, reduce its size, enlarge it, or rotate.

On the Menu bar, go to “Editions”, then “Manual Transformation”, and let your creativity express itself. The goal here is to find the “aspect” that will be most important for our montage of several photos.

Step 4: Some more clipping…

Now that we took care of the pan, it’s time to do the same with the fried chicken! xD. We will cut it to incorporate it into our basic image (i.e. the background with the pan).

As mentioned earlier, you can use the polygonal lasso tool. Once done, click on “Delete” to remove the rest. Press the “Back” button to correct if an error occurs.

As with the frying pan, you can resize or turn the chicken leg to fit the size you want. As a reminder, it is in “Editions”, then “Manual transformation”. Once again, we must find the right orientation and the right (natural) dimensions so that the cut-out image fits perfectly into our montage of several photos.

I did the same thing with broccoli :)

It is obviously necessary to carry out the same manipulations for all the images you want to integrate in your editing of multiple photos with Photoshop. For me, it means cutting off more food: meat, garlic, red pepper, pieces of carrots, chilli and spinach leaves.

Step 5: Duplicate an element

This step is optional and applies only if you want to duplicate certain elements. In other words – if you need an image to be present more than once in your montage of several photos – being able to duplicate it is a blessing :) It’s very convenient and it saves time.

To duplicate an element, as I did with the garlic and chilli, just duplicate a layer. To do this, right-click on the layer to duplicate (the layers are on your right), then “Duplicate”, then “OK”. A dialog box will appear and click “OK” again.

Step 6: Integrate a PNG image

It is also an optional step of editing multiple photos with Photoshop, but adapted to the result that I wish to obtain.

To make it more stylish and realistic, we will incorporate a few splashes of oil on our stove (PNG format). The advantage with a PNG file is that it has a transparent background. In other words, it does not need to be cut off! You just have to drag the image into your visual and believe me, it makes it really simple!

The small problem here is that we have a splash of blue color, but we want a splash of yellow to give the illusion of oil (what don’t we have to do to succeed in this photo montage xD). You’d agree that we fry food with oil and not water :) We will have to change the colours of the liquid. Fortunately, Photoshop is well-equipped for this kind of problem.

On the Menu bar, go to “Picture”, then “Settings”, and finally “Hue / Saturation”. You can reduce the image opacity (so that it’s more transparent) and, in fact, I reduced it to 79% as you can see in the previous screenshot. You can also increase the saturation and change its hue to turn yellow. And here’s the result :

Step 7: Merge layers to finalize your editing of multiple photos with Photoshop

The penultimate step is now to merge the layers. It’s also known as “flattening the image”. Among other things, layer-merging enables you to reduce the amount of memory required for editing multiple photos, as well as making it easier to adjust for the last step (see Step 8).

To do this, select all layers (always on the right side in Photoshop), right-click, and then “Merge Layers”.

Step 8: Fine-tune the colours in “Raw Camera Filter”

To spice up our photomontage, we will finish with the basic settings and in particular the colour settings (exposure, contrast, white, black, temperature, etc.). The goal of this last step – editing multiple photos with Photoshop – is to have optimal and uniform colours on the whole result.

And so, on the Menu bar, go to “Filter”, then “Raw Camera Filter”. Move the sliders according to the result you think is the best.

And… finally here we are with a beautiful visual ready to be used on a website.You must admit that it looks pretty good eh :)?

You see, besides altering silly pics, we can do very nice things with Photoshop, especially when you are editing multiple photos. I hope, in any case, that I have been of help to you – to make your own montage of several photos. This said, we’ll meet again soon for new tutorials :)!

>See here: How to a create speed effect on photoshop