| Just like a movie, every collage has its stars. But what would the leading players be without a strong supporting cast? Capitalizing on the versatility of stock images is an effective way to take a simple photo and transform it into an attention-grabbing image. To follow along with the text in Photoshop, download the musicman.zip archive (3 MB), extract and open the musicman.psd file.
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 When making a collage’s foundation,
it’s important to keep some breathing
room around your base images. Then, to
smoothly blend supporting images, give
them plenty of semitransparent edge
pixels by loosely lassoing an image, adding
a mask, and applying a Gaussian Blur
to the mask to fade edges. Touch up the
selection by painting with a soft, low-Opacity airbrush on the mask. Here,
I started with a photo of a cellist as the
star character and added a complementary
stock image of a sky.
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Once a base is set, support leading
players by finding iconographic images,
or evocative shapes, colors, and
lines. The goal here is to create a mood
through symbolism. I masked an image
of strings, which also emphasized the cellist’s
brown tones. Usually, these images
look fine in Normal blending mode, but
you can experiment with other modes,
Opacity, and masks to combine images
more seamlessly. For example, I masked
a flower image and set the blending
mode to Overlay at 53% Opacity to blend
it thoroughly with the foundation. I also
masked an image of sheet music and set
the layer to Color Burn.
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To blur intersections between images,
span textural images across them that
impose a common pattern of relief, color,
and light. Close-ups of texture are ideal,
be they of natural or man-made textures
such as paper, painted surfaces, rocks,
rusted metal, or even condensation on a
window. To convincingly blend texture, it
may be helpful to alter color, brightness,
Opacity or blending mode. Blend modes like Overlay, Hard Light, and Soft Light
are ideal to soften details, especially
with rough textures. You can also add
a mask to selectively reduce the opacity
of overwhelming areas. Select the mask
thumbnail, dab with an airbrush where
you need to lighten, then smooth the
transition by applying a Gaussian Blur to
the mask. I duplicated a layer of crinkled
pink paper and placed the layers side
by side, then desaturated them (Shift-
Command/Ctrl-U), and set the layers to
Hard Light at 46% Opacity. An advantage
of using textural images is you can
stretch them to draw out contours and
spread subtle shapes across image borders.
I placed a close-up image of rocks
and used Free Transform (Command/
Ctrl-T) to extend it over the canvas, then
set the layer to Soft Light at 64% Opacity.
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Light the stage! Look for stock images
with bright color or splashes of light to
further unify your collage or place focus
on your stars. I positioned the golden
reflections from a trumpet image on
a layer set to Screen to accentuate the
cellist’s face. Stock images can also be
used like a stamp to create echo balance.
I duplicated the trumpet layer, scaled
it down with Free Transform, set it to
Screen at 77% Opacity, and moved it to
the lower left corner. I added another
image that contained a bright central
area and gently adjusted the play of light
by setting the layer to Soft Light at 62%
Opacity. (Only the lighting layers are
visible in this step’s image so you can see
their placement. They are shown with
blending modes applied, prior to any
Opacity changes or masking.)
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The final image is shown at left.
More Collage Techniques
- Add a Levels adjustment layer at
the top to deepen the color of the
entire image, as I did here.
- Place an image at the top of the
Layers palette and set the blending
mode to Color.
- Choose Image > Adjustments >
Match Color to impose the colors
of a stock image onto your piece.
- Rearrange the layer stacking order.
- Sample from a stock image with the
Eyedropper tool to set Foreground and
Background Colors. Add a Gradient
Map adjustment layer.
- Leave a stock image’s blending mode
set to Normal, move it below a base
image, and change the base image’s
mode instead.
- Position a stock image so not all of
it appears in the canvas, or manipulate
it by rotating or flipping it.
- Use stock images with streaks of
light to emphasize direction.
- Blur a detailed image for straight
coloring or lighting.
- Add lighting by setting a black-and-white image to Screen.
Working intuitively is important,
but if you can’t justify an image’s
inclusion, maybe it doesn’t belong.
Ask yourself, “Is the collage better
because of this addition?” You may
find a later addition of an image
makes an earlier favorite obsolete.
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Victoria Spah is a post production
media specialist at the University
of Virginia.
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