Problem making photo collages

J
Posted By
jtzachm
Apr 18, 2005
Views
365
Replies
2
Status
Closed
Here is a problem I ran into trying to make a collage of photos. In making the collage I wanted to add the individual photos with a drop shadow of its own.

Using a NAPP site tutorial and custom shapes, I changed the photo background to a regular layer and added a TRANSPARENT layer underneath it. I made the photo layer active and used "Layer; add vector mask; hide all". I then applied the custom shape– that gave me my rough edges. I then added a dropshadow so that the jagged edges made their own shadow onto the transparent layer underneath.

To make the collage I opened a new picture and wanted to get the shaped photo, and the drop shadow, copy/pasted onto its own layer in the newpic. HERE IS THE PROBLEM: if you flatten the layers in the photo before cut and pasting it, the transparent underlayer becomes white, adding its own white boarder into the collage. if you don’t flatten it, before cut and pasting, the drop shadow doesn’t come along.

How can I just get this shaped photo and its drop shadow into the collage without the white pixels being added ? Is there a way to flatted without transforming the transparent underlayer into white?

thanks for any hints.

JEFF
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T
Tacit
Apr 18, 2005
In article ,
wrote:

To make the collage I opened a new picture and wanted to get the shaped photo, and the drop shadow, copy/pasted onto its own layer in the newpic. HERE IS THE PROBLEM: if you flatten the layers in the photo before cut and pasting it, the transparent underlayer becomes white, adding its own white boarder into the collage. if you don’t flatten it, before cut and pasting, the drop shadow doesn’t come along.

Don’t copy and paste.

Link all the layers together in the Layers palette. Then use the Move tool to drag the layers from the source to the destination. Copy/paste is slow and inefficient; it requires allocating memory for the copied version of the file, and if your goal is to get a picture from one Photoshop document to another Photoshop document, copy/paste is not the way to go.

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K
KatWoman
Apr 19, 2005
maybe I am not understanding about the shapes part, but assuming you have each photo in the collage on a separate layer, why not just add the drop shadow to each layer by using the effects icon? (at the bottom of layers palette) Then copy merged and then paste or flatten.

wrote in message
Here is a problem I ran into trying to make a collage of photos. In making the collage I wanted to add the individual photos with a drop shadow of its own.

Using a NAPP site tutorial and custom shapes, I changed the photo background to a regular layer and added a TRANSPARENT layer underneath it. I made the photo layer active and used "Layer; add vector mask; hide all". I then applied the custom shape– that gave me my rough edges. I then added a dropshadow so that the jagged edges made their own shadow onto the transparent layer underneath.

To make the collage I opened a new picture and wanted to get the shaped photo, and the drop shadow, copy/pasted onto its own layer in the newpic. HERE IS THE PROBLEM: if you flatten the layers in the photo before cut and pasting it, the transparent underlayer becomes white, adding its own white boarder into the collage. if you don’t flatten it, before cut and pasting, the drop shadow doesn’t come along.
How can I just get this shaped photo and its drop shadow into the collage without the white pixels being added ? Is there a way to flatted without transforming the transparent underlayer into white?
thanks for any hints.

JEFF

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