Hi Snarkler,
There are many ways to go about this and I don’t know offhand of the best post or link to send you to, but here’s a quick & dirty method that has little to do with which version of Photshop you are using. However, if you could identify the version, that may gain you some more helpful version-specific suggestions.
1. Open your seven images and for each, check the Image Size dialog to see if they all have the same resolution. If not, set this the same to keep matters simple. If this is for print, I suggest 300ppi. If that makes your images too small, you may need to enable the Resample option and set the document size larger for each image.
2. Create a new image with the same resolution at 8.5×11 inches. To facilitate the following step, position this image apart from the other open ones so that you can see both the source images and this new one.
3. Assuming the sources images are all simple, flattened images: Return to each image and then click on the single layer for that image in the Layer Palette, and drag that layer into the new image. Repeat for all remaining 6 images until the new image has a total of 7 layers, the first being the original background. You may want close all your source images now, but that’s up to you.
4. Now working with the new image, each layer you click on becomes the active layer for any subsequent edits you make. You may find it easier initially to hide all but the one layer of interest, and also click on that layer to make it your active layer. Perform your edits to that layer and then move on to the next layer, unhiding it and perhaps hiding the one you’ve just finished with.
Note, if you leave the layers visible, they will overlap or obscure one another, but that too may be part of your desired end result, so you will have to use your own judgement as to which layers to hide or keep revealed.
5. If you need to arrange the layers, you will want to unhide all of them and then individually select each layer and move or transform it as needed. If you have more than one layer you want to keep in the same position relative to one another, link them and move them as a single object.
Here is a simple Flash movie (3.8MB) showing the ideas, although I didn’t bother with hiding/unhiding layers. <
http://ambress.com/photoshop/composite>
Hopefully you find this helpful although the video lacks any narration.
Regards,
Daryl
