"HK" wrote in message
I want to take a bunch of pics from a photo shoot and make a collage where there are vertical + horizontal lines between the pictures. Maybe a 16 x 20
background, with one big pic in the middle and lots of little rectangles all
around it. I'm used to drawing programs but not used to drawing in Photoshop CS. What a pain! I've spent 1/2 hour and not getting anywhere.
Surely there must a straightforward way to create the frame (all the lines)
and then have photoshop drop each photo into the squares? Is there? All I
can figure out is how to draw lines, each line creating a layer, and then I
have to manually figure out the exact size of the rectangles and make the photos that exact size. I'm sure I'm just being stupid and there must be a
better way to make the grid and drop the photos into each square with auto-cropping into that square size. Can someone please give me a quick step-by-step to do this? Thanks.
make the collage first
make a new document whatever final size and res u like
open all the photos you want to use
record as an action to save time
on first photo select all edit copy or cut (Ctrl+c or x) click the new doc u created edit paste or (ctrl+v)
close no save
stop the action recording
automate batch on all open docs
now you will have each photo on a separate layer
resize and position with move tool (choose select layer automatically), now when you click a pic they will move without having to select each layer first, more like an edit mode
use transform scale (click the link to keep proportion) to get the size you need, using masks is better than cropping each photo as you can recover the hidden part if needed
(use the marquee tool, select inverse, click the mask at bottom of the layers palette)
Then when you get the layout, use LAYER effects, (you can copy paste this into each layer to match)
Select stroke choose color and size and all the images will have borders between them.
You could actually add this to the action recording after the paste step.