Mark S. Johnson Photography

Ed Wisbrun recently submitted a Photoshop Workbench request to examine some of the secrets behind Lisa K. Photographics wonderful photo collages. If you’d like to see her work, take a look at www.lisakphotographics.net. Lisa specializes in portraits of people doing what they love — playing guitar, at a rodeo, on the football field, or surfing. She photographs each subject from a variety of angles and then blends the images into a beautifully arranged collage. In addition to photographing the subject, Lisa captures lifestyle elements, such as a guitar, a cowboy hat, or a surfboard, to integrate with the portraits. In some cases, she ties the design together by applying a texture.

In today’s Workbench, we’ll design a collage that centers around a surfer. As we build the collage, we’ll have an opportunity to explore some compositing gems, such as content-aware scaling, soft-edged mask blending, a semi-transparent drop shadow, and a perfect reason to use the Layers panel Fill slider.