Create Fine-Art Montages?

To blend multiple images in kind of a fine-art montage look, first go under the File menu, under Scripts, and choose Load Files into Stack. Choose your images, click OK, and each one opens into the same document, with each on its own layer. You could also open each one and copy-and-paste them all into one document, but this is just easier and faster. If you already have the images open in Photoshop, you can still use this script to put them on layers for you. Anyway, once they’re all in one document, on their own layers, click on the top layer in the layer stack, then double-click on its thumbnail to bring up the Blending Options in the Layer Style dialog. In the Blend If section, at the bottom of the dialog (seen above left), are two sliders you’ll use to create your montage. Now, if you just start dragging, things will look very harsh and jaggy. To get a nice, smooth blend, press-and-hold the Option (PC: Alt) key, and then click-and-drag one of the four slider knobs. This splits the knob in two and makes the transition nice and smooth. Try this technique on each of the layers to create different looks. Different sliders will affect each image in different ways, so it’s a great way to artistically create montages on the fly. Also, try this same technique on a type layer, where it works really well for blending text with an image. I often see script fonts used in these montages, especially old-world looking fonts (like Cezanne; seen above), and they look really cool (worth trying, for sure). (Note: For my montage above, in addition to using the Blend If sliders, I also used a couple layer masks with gradients, and different layer blend modes and opacity settings to get this look. We looked at all of these in Chapter 6.)