Step One
First of all, we need to choose some images to blend together, I’m going to make a Newcastle United montage, and here are my images:
Image One
Image Two
Image Three
Note that these images are most likely copyrighted, and cannot be used for commercial purposes, I just picked them from a google image search.
Step Two
Now then into Photoshop, first make a new canvas with a white background, mine is 500px * 200px
Also, open the images that will make up the montage.
I’m going to start with the picture of Sir Bobby Robson (tutorial_ps_montage03.jpg) drag this picture onto your main canvas (or copy and paste) - this image as it stands is too big for my canvas, so I have shrunk it a bit to 300px wide, 200px high, as shown above using the free transform tool (ctrl + T)
Step Three
Now, whilst holding ctrl, click on the layer with sir bobby on, to get its selection, now go select–feather, and enter 10pixels, then hit ctrl+shift+i to select the inverse, then press delete a few times until the edges are completely blurred (I took 6 deletes). Your image should now look like that shown to the left.
Step Four
Now, we do the same to the other 2 images, remember drag/copy+paste into main canvas, then select–feather 10px, then ctrl+shift+i then delete the inverse a few times, and you should get something along the lines of that shown to the left.
Now as you can see, that isn’t too impressive, it is very obvious where each image ends, and it looks generally pretty scrappy, so onto step five, and layer masks…
Step Five
OK, for anybody unfamiliar with the concept of layer masks, they can be thought of as a layer associated with the layer you’re working on, and if you paint white on it, the layer mask is see through, however if you paint black (or shades of grey) then the mask gets progressively more opaque, this will become clearer as you see an example.
Step Six
To make a layer mask you go layer–add layer mask — reveal all and in your layers palette you will notice a white box next to the thumbnail of your layer - this is the mask. Now grab the brush tool, select a large-ish, soft size (I’m using 100px) and press D then X to reset your colors (so black is foreground color), and paint where you do NOT want to be able to see the image, to the left I have a close up view of the parts of Alan Shearer that I blocked out, and what the layer mask looks like then.
Note also that if you make a mistake whilst painting black, painting white over it will undo it - this is the flexibility of layer masks.
Step Seven
Now simply do the same for any other layers that you feel you need to soften the edges of, I left the Sir Bobby image as it was, but blocked out a lot of the ball in the net image - your final montage should look something like that to the left.
Conclusion
Your final touch should be to add some typography, as shown below.
