Continued from the previous page
Now, simply select all those slice files and drag them over onto the Photoshop icon. They'll all open, one by one -- and you can quickly begin dragging each into the 300dpi work file using the MOVE tool. Don't bother about arranging them now, we'll do that later. After each drag, hit your keyboard command to close the slice file.
Once you've brought all your files together, you'll see they've arrived on separate layers. Before arranging into your final grid, you'll want to set the layer style to get your photo border and drop shadow. This way, as you arrange the photos you can do so working with the shadows, etc.
Since this is a large file, and the photo borders are only going to seal about 12 pixels from the edges of the photos, I'll go ahead and do an inside stroke to get the white border.
Open the STROKE Dialog now to see the settings. Notice the stroke is added to the inside of the layer image -- which effectively cuts off some image. Notice also it gives you a nice, sharp, cornet. (If we selected "outside" for the stroke, you would get a rounded corner -- not what we want here. I'll show you that one a little later.)
Now open the SHADOW Dialog to see my settings. Since these settings are dependant on your resolution settings, I'll not impose them on you. However, just adjust the settings until you get the effect you like.
Once your layer styles are perfect, you can replicate the same style to all the tile layers. There are various ways to do this -- however, I like to drag them one-by-one to watch as they affect each layer. Sometimes, after the second or third, I'll want to tweak it a bit, and bulk apply forces me to bulk remove.
Click the "Expand" arrow at the right of the layer in the Layers Palette to expand the styles. Now, simply hold in the Option key (Mac, Alt for Windows) click on the effect and drag the effect down to the next layer. You'll see it instantly applied. Repeat for each layer.
Finishing : at this point, I select all those layers and use the Layers menu to "group" the layers. This tucks them neatly away into a layer folder, getting them out of the way.
As you can see from this example, I've added a little Thanksgiving message, styled it, and also added a tan layer behind with the Texturizer filter set to a fine grain -- just for a little seasonal texture. Everything looks great, so I can save the file -- then flatten the file and save it again, using the Save As... to rename it and make it a TIF file for import into my awaiting Quark file.
At right, you can see my finished card.
Time elapsed: 20 minutes.
I've also provided you with the 300 dpi version, all ready for your Thanksgiving greeting, so you can have a little fun with it! (tgiving_card.jpg 1300 x 1650, 812K)
At this point, I must say that while this is by far the easiest and fastest method, I may not like the way the white borders cut into my image. I think I would also like a little more randomness to the tiles on the design.
Now, let's manually create our tiles to build our mosaic...
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from the Editor:
I was delighted that day back in 1989 when Peggy Killburn called to ask if I could handle one more speaker in my "Great Graphics Tips & Tricks" session scheduled for the 1990 Macworld Expo. "Yes" was my response to her request to add Russell Brown to my panel. After all, we loved Adobe's young "Illustrator" program, and were quite anxious to try out their upcoming new product called "Photoshop." After seeing his demo, I was convinced Photoshop would be big. So the next month we added "Photoshop Tips & Tricks" to our regular DTG Magazine uploads to Compuserve, GEnie and AOL. The rest is history.
I only regret that I didn't trademark the name.
Editor / Publisher: Photoshop Tips & Tricks, DTG Magazine.