If the text is unreadable, you might need to draw a solid box behind, then soften it by reducing the opacity or changing its blending mode. Select a typeface and colour from the Character tab, then insert your text. Select the Type tool from the toolbar and draw a text box onto your canvas, preferably over an area that is either very dark or light. When you are happy with the layout of your collage, you may wish to add a title or a message. Photoshop CC has plenty of options in the Character tab, including live text which changes the typeface of your copy as you scroll down the list (Image credit: Matt Smith/Future Owns/Adobe) If you then want to move the image inside the frame, double click on the layer to open the smart object window and move it there. If you imported your images as Smart Objects, you can simply delete the unwanted areas instead of masking them, since you won't be losing any of the original image. Repeat this step for each layer until they’re all sitting flush against the border lines. You can edit your masks later, if you change your mind, by painting black and white into the mask area. Use the Marquee Tool to select unwanted areas on each layer, inverse this selection by right-clicking and selecting ‘select inverse’, then press the mask button at the bottom of the Layers panel (this looks like a circle in a box). With the borders now placed, it will be obvious that some of your photos are overlapping.

Use masks to hide unwanted areas rather than deleting them outright, since masks can be edited later if you change your mind (Image credit: Matt Smith/Future Owns/Adobe) You can also change your window arrangement to show two files at once, then literally drag and drop layers from one to the other. Do this by holding the Alt key down when dragging and dropping your images into the file.Īnother technique is to open all the images in separate Photoshop windows, selecting each with Cmd + A, copying with Cmd + C, then pasting into the master document with Cmd + V. The benefit of doing this is that you can reposition and resize them without any loss of quality.Īlternatively you can embed the images as linked layers, which means they will appear on the canvas as low-res versions, while linking back to the original files on your computer, avoiding slow rendering times. Perhaps the simplest is dragging and dropping images from Finder, directly onto the canvas, which imports them as smart objects. There are various methods for gathering images into one file. Holding the Alt key down will add them as linked layers (Image credit: Matt Smith/Future Owns/Adobe)

You can drag all of your images into Photoshop, straight in from the Finder window.

Automatic montage maker