- Along the top middle of the screen, select ‘Expert’. Under ‘Window’ click down to select ‘Show Layers’
- In left tool bar, swop the black and white colour at the base by clicking the 2 way arrow to show black as the lower colour – this is the ‘background colour’
- Go to : . FILE NEW. When Box appears, give file a Name, then click the arrow after the Pre-set Default Size downwards, and select ‘Custom’. Click arrow after Width and select ‘pixels’, then input 1600. In height box input 1200 pixels. Resolution can be left as is. Unless all your images are mono keep RGB Colour, or if Mono you could select Greyscale. Usually you would change Background Contents to Background Colour to give a black canvas.
- Go to : FILE OPEN. And select your 3 images (hold down control on each, to select all three at once, otherwise open individually).
- Using the first of these tabbed images, go to FILE-AUTOMATION TOOLS – FIT IMAGE. When Box appears it is suggested you enter pixel dimensions a little smaller than the black canvas size, i.e. less than 1600 x 1200 (paying attention as to whether your image is in portrait or landscape mode) – my suggestion would be to input 1400 px width and 1000 px height.
- Now with this same image on the screen, go to SELECT – ALL.
Then go to EDIT-COPY. This copies the image onto the computer’s clipboard, so now go back to your black canvas image and go to EDIT-PASTE. You should now see your image in the black space, and if you look to your layers palette to the right of the screen you will see your image as a separate layer hovering above the black background.
- Select your 2nd Image and Repeat stages 4 and 5.
7.Select your 3rd image and Repeat stages 4 and 5. You should now have all 3 images as separate layers above the black background. You can now close your original 3 files.
- You can now re-arrange your images and resize as necessary. To do this on each, first make sure the correct image layer is selected in the layers palette (turn it blue), then under SELECT in the left tool bar, click the top left icon, which is the MOVE TOOL.
- This will produce a selection highlighted by a white line and boxes. The image can be moved by clicking in the image box and moving with the mouse. To change dimensions, whilst keeping the aspect ratio constant, click a Corner Box and pull inwards or outwards with the Mouse. When happy with position and size, double click in the same image on screen, or click the green tick that appears to bottom right of the selection.
- Select the other image layers in turn and repeat the actions in 9 above until you are satisfied with the layout. (You can re-adjust size and position again by re-using the move tool to fine-tune everything.) If you want images to overlap, you can do so, and can change how they interact with each other by changing the order of the layers – click a layer and pull down or up with the mouse to move a layer below or above the other layer/layers.
11 OPTIONAL STAGE
If you would like a keyline around each of your images, proceed as follows :
Select the image layer you require by clicking again in the layers palette.
Go to the Select part of the left tool bar and click the bottom right item which is the specific tool that selects. In the bottom left of your screen you will see options and ensure that the ‘Magic Wand’ is highlighted and that its ‘tolerance’ is set to 32. . Now click, using this magic wand on the screen but avoiding the actual image you are working on. This will select (marching ants) everything but your image, Now go to the top of the screen and use SELECT-INVERSE, This will now show just your image selected. Finally go to EDIT-STROKE, and in the box put a width of at least 2 pixels, Continuing in the Box, use the Colour White or click in the Colour Box and select the shade of hue you require. Now make sure that the ‘Location’ is set to ‘inside’, and click OK. To remove the marching ants, press CONTROL-D (together), and you will now see the keyline you have produced.
Now use the same technique on the other 2 images
12.FINALISING
If you find your images look slightly softer as a result of their reduction, I suggest you highlight one layer at a time and individually apply a small amount of sharpening – go to ENHANCE-UNSHARP MASK (probably no more than Amount 25, radius 1, threshold 0 is necessary)
Finally : save your image with its layers as a PSD file. Then go to the top right of the layers palette and click the tiny arrow and select ‘Flatten Image’. Resave as a JPG at 100% to produce your tripic competition entry.