Collages are a wonderful way to present a collection of photos. Though there are a lot of collage maker apps through which you can easily make your photo collages, making collages on Photoshop CC gives you control and allows you to complete the whole process using just one app, including any image adjustments. So here’s a step-by-step guide for importing and arranging images in the app.
Select your images
Firstly, you need to pick the images that you want to display. You can only select 5-8 pictures maximum as it will be impossible to drag all the collection on a single page. Collages aren’t just a spread out of images; you can narrate a whole story through it. To grab the attention of your viewers, you can select photos of different frames, styles, shapes, and angles. Before bringing all the pictures together try to edit every image and fix its focus, brightness, and contrast.
Create a document
The New Document window provides a choice of pre-loaded templates, which are a good starting point for any project. You can choose the width, height, and resolution and color mode according to the kind of project you are intended to make whether it’s for digital or print, web, and mobile. You can edit the size of the canvas in Image > Canvas Size.
Time to import the images
You can drag all of your images into Photoshop, straight from the Finder window. Holding the Alt key, add them as layers. Now the images will appear in small objects and it will help you reposition and resize them without any loss of quality. Adjust the images into the right position by the use of the Selection tool. If you’re trying to edit any photo individually you can turn layers on and off using the eye icon to the left of each layer, in the Layers panel.
Add Borders and Text
With the help of a pen tool (with stroke applied) or a rectangular tool, you can make borders. You can spread it in all the four corners duplicating it with the help of Free Transform, you can change the color of shapes in the Fill window, where you can also add new swatches and create gradients. You can drag guidelines out from the ruler if you’re struggling to line up your images rulers (turn these on with Cmd + R or under View > Rulers). You can also choose multiple layers and use Layer > Align to straighten them up.
Now add some text to leave a message or caption on your image. Select the Type Tool from the toolbar and draw a text box onto your canvas, adjust the text wherever you want just make sure that it’s visible and readable to the viewers.
Export
Save your image as a .psd file, so you can edit it later on, then export it in whatever format you need. And your creative photo collage is ready!