Creating a Montage in PSP8

Basic Tutorial on how to create a photo montage in PSP 8

To begin select a couple of pictures that are the same theme or coloring. If your pictures are all different you can turn them to a sepia tone, or greyscale.

Now create a new image that is transparent. I like to work with 8X10. This size gives you plenty of room to add pictures and accents. If you are planning print your art work it is a good idea to make the image 8X10 with a dpi of 200. If your computer can handle it you can raise the dpi to 300. I always work with 200dpi and my pics print with great quality.

Now select a background color that will work well with your pictures. Now start to put your pictures onto your new canvas. To do this make sure the picture you are moving is active. Then go to the layers palette and drag it to your new canvas. Repeat this until all your pics are on your canvas. You may need to resize your pictures to fit. You can either use the deform tool or use the Image-Resize. Make sure that resize all layers is not checked. Once they are all resized to fit you can start to place them where you think they look best.

Here is how mine looks

The Masking
First set your forground color to black and background color to white on your materials palatte
Now we are going to start masking. I like to mask on layer at a time.
To create the mask select a layer, I pick the most forward picture. Now go to the menu Layer-New Mask Layer-From Image, in the little window that pops up make sure there is a dot in front of Source Luminance and click ok. Now select your paint brush tool, choose the default brush. Make sure it has these settings.

Make sure the layer you want to work on is selected. It hepls to see what you are doing if you hide your other layers. Now begin to remove the unwanted areas of your picture. Try to get as close to the are you want to keep as you can. (HINT) Black removes unwanted parts and white will keep the wanted areas. ) Once you have done a basic removal of what you what change to white and paint the areas you want to keep. Change your brush to these setting

(If you feel your edges are to sharp you can adjust the density.)

Now switch back to black and paint close to the edge of the are you want to keep. This will soften your edges so they aren't to sharp. It will also remove the other unwanted background of your picture. If you accidently paint in an area you want to keep you can just change o white and paint it back in.
Countinue adding the mask and painting what you want and don't want with your remaining areas.
Now you can do some playing with your background. I just used different brushes and then added texture to mine. You can also add more pictures or elements. Now for the fun part. You can blend your layers by adjusting the opacity or blend mode on the layer palette.

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