Making a Montageby Barry Beckham

I have been making montages for many years, certainly since the early days of digital photography and Photoshop 3 and that goes way back. I am not talking CS-3 here, but the original Photoshop 3

I did make a dedicated tutorial disk on this subject for Photoshop CS, this was the Photoshop version that followed PS-7. The techniques we used way back then to make montage images haven't changed much, but video size and quality is much better now. I did start to wonder about those two terms Composite and Montage and set out to see if there is actually a difference between them. To do that I read other photographers views on the Internet.

One person described a composite as Pictures that are "constructed" creations. Saying that the technique often generates interesting and weird surreal effects. He suggests we call this "manipulation" or "montage"

I am not sure manipulation is the right word, but we cannot deny that it is manipulation, but then so is fixing red eye or cloning out a dust spot, but they are far removed from a montage

One photographer said he struggled to maintain consistent lighting and suggested that this could be minimised at the taking stage, but I am not convinced of that. My montages use images shot all over the place so different lighting is what we need to deal with in our image editor. I suspect this photographers problem may have been his choice of images. Not every two images we pick work well together and odd lighting effects will make matters worse I suppose.

Image above – Just 2 images taken from the same spot – A frosty piece of slate and a frosty landscape

Wikipedia suggested that the montage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining two or more photographs into an illusion of an unreal subject. Sometimes the resulting composite image is photographed so that a final image may appear as a seamless photographic print.

I think that last part dates the information quite a bit and we have no need to re-photograph the montage now, but we understand the meaning. They went on to say that the technique is often referred to as photoshopping", due to a particular software often used, but I am not sure I go along with that either.

Photoshopping has become almost a derogatory remark made to describe bad image editing or maybe editing that a viewer believes was inappropriate or wrong in some way.

I am not entirely sure I can explain why, but I considered a composite image where the images used had sharp edges. For example, we cut out a flying bird and place that into a sky and I would have called that a composite. However, a montage would be 2 images or more, but the images added are softly blended together, but I am not sure this is right either.

Image above is a mix of two images, the bird is a cut out, but a high quality one

After doing that little research on the Internet I have given more thought to this and perhaps it would be more accurate to say, Compositing is the technique used in our image editor to create a Montage, so it doesn't really matter whether the edges of the images are sharply cut out or blended.

I think this style of image creation has a lot of similarities with Audio Visual slide shows. Meaning that if we want to use 4-5 images in a montage and we have 30 to choose from we have freedom of choice and flexibility, just like making a slide show. We need that flexibility because making a montage is not an exact science, we win some and we lose some.

The difference is that we can use images that are not stand alone images. Camera club members will know what I mean here. Images that are not quite strong enough in content to be considered above average. Good, but they don't stand out from the crowd. In fact we don't even need perfect sharpness to use images in a composite. Which means these techniques can make good use of

images that may not have seen the light of day for some time.

There are always exceptions to any rule or guidance offered, but I think my montages work best when they are on a theme. We gain a lot of visual balance that way, but never say never is my motto and always keep your options open.

There are about 6 images used in this image and because it has a theme it has visual balance

We can make great montages using just two images or we can use 22 images. A skill we often have to develop is knowing when to stop adding images. When our creativity is flowing we can often pass the point where the image was good and take it a little too far. This is one of the reasons we must save many different version/stages of a montage as its created. We must have a route back a couple steps just in case we need to go back a step or two.

When we start the composite process to make a montage what do we need first? Personally I like to start with a textured base image. It can be anything from rocks on a beach, a piece of slate, old weathered wood, the bark of a tree almost anything. I find it gives me that starting point and when I add the first image the blending and masking process always seems to work much better on a textured background

Sometimes I might even change the background as the work progresses, but we need to start with something and texture works for me every time.

The next thing I look for after a theme of course is a centre of interest. With the creation of a montage we have to design it with composition in mind. The importance of composition is just the same in a montage as it is in any other image. A good strong subject should be chosen to form the basis of our composition. It can be absolutely anything within the theme you have chosen, but it does need to be strong enough to draw the eye.

One of those subjects that work well 99 times out of a hundred is a person or portrait. It works every time, because a picture full of different images is still dominated by a face. Writing or text from a sign can be strong, but it follows that we can sometime spilt the attention if we have a strong face and text in the same image. These are the personal choices we must make as we go along.

In this example that contains 7 or 8 images, there is no doubt what is the centre of interest.

There are other tricks and tips to make the centre of interest stand out. Selective colour, enhancing the colour in that area and lightening the subject. These all help. Colour balance can become tricky at times, but if the montage is of a historical nature then sepia toning is one way to deal with it, or monochrome of course.

The Tools Required

The technical aspects of creating a composite and montage is to use Photoshop Layers, Layer Masks and Layer Blend Modes. These are the core tools we will need and any version of Photoshop will have them.

In fact, so will the later versions of Photoshop Elements that support layer masks, but even layer masks are not essential. They do make life a little easier, but users of earlier versions of Elements that do not contain layer masks can use the eraser tool.

Layer Blend modes allow one layer to blend with the layer beneath, but in all the years I have been using these options, I still find I cannot predict what will work for me and what will not. The Blend options that seem to be the most useful are Darken, Multiply, Overlay, Soft light and Hard light, but it's best to try them all as sometimes the unexpected occurs.

Its also worth looking at Smart Objects/Layers when making a montage. There are times when we need to resize an image only to find later that it needs to be a bit bigger. Smart Objects allow us the freedom to reduce the size of an image and enlarge it again later, without any loss of quality.

In normal circumstances we would not use the transform tools to reduce size and then use them again to increase size with the same image/layer, unless we are working with smart objects. The one thing we must be aware of when using smart objects is that some editing tools like the levels and others are greyed out, until the smart layer is returned to a normal layer status. Our tutorial disk will cover all of this.

The issue here is that we want to retain Smart Object/Layer status as long as possible, but we also need levels at times, so its a judgement call when we decide to switch from a Smart Object to a standard layer. To change a layer into a Smart Object, go to Layers > Smart Objects > Convert to Smart Object. You can do this within the layers palette too. To return the layer to a standard Layer, do the same thing in reverse and select Rasterize.

4 images were included in this montage that some told me they found quite disturbing !!

So, in summary, start with a textured image and the clouds in our image above serve the same purpose. They give us a starting point, something to work from. Next choose an image that you think will provide the composition and centre of interest for your montage and add that.

Be prepared as you add other images to change that centre of interest. I have found that as I add pictures, what seemed a good centre of interest choice at the start, may seem less so later. So we always need to be prepared to think again and try something else. That goes with all the images we introduce, but the one that will provide the composition and centre of interest is important.

I increase or decrease colour and tone (levels) as I go along to balance the different aspects of my montage. As I have said above, its great to use Smart Objects, but we may need to adjust each image for colour and tone as we go along. We need to see the effect we are creating as it builds up, which in turn feeds our creativity and helps us to decides what is next. Of course we can work directly from Raw Smart object images too.

The rest is just good taste and an eye for design.

If there is one piece of advice I would give is that the images you use, generally needs to connect to one another. Many Montages I have seen, contain small images placed in each corner of the image canvas. They can become too separated from each other and then unconnected. Therefore they look like pictures dropped in the corner of another image and not a Montage.

Take the image below as an example: Here I started off with rocks from a seashore to provide the textured starting point. The skull and bones shot in a museum where added next as the composition and centre of interest.

Save many versions and stages of your montage, because we do become a little blinded sometimes, especially when we are in full creative flow. Looking at my own montage some days later I asked myself why I didn't put a rotation to the right of the skull and bones. I think it would make that area much stronger. Why didn't I spot that at the time? Creative mist was dulling my senses.

However, back to the the issue of connecting elements together. In my example above each part runs into or under other parts of the montage giving it that connection. There are some gold coins used in the top left, but the coin image wasn't really large enough so I used three copies of that image. One top left, one centre, one top right.

The bottom right is a gold artefact, also shot in a museum along with the pots on the left. Another golden horse artefact was used top left, but both of these were powerfully gold in colour, just as only real gold can be. It had to be toned down so as not to compete with the skull and bones.

Finally the sword was added. The image is probably all over the place in relation to the historical time line, but visually it works. During the course of making the montage I discarded at least 4 layers where objects I selected just didn't look right.

I have already said that the skills and thoughts required to make a montage are not so different to those we need to make a slide show. Generally a slide show is also made on a theme and if we can select 30-40 images from a collection of 100, then we have that same freedom to create that I spoke of earlier with Montages

In fact I did use the Montage technique some while ago to create a slide show comprised solely of Montaged images. The idea behind this was to have an almost constantly changing image on screen in the form of a slide show. Its called Another Age. Just click the link, download the zipped file from our web page – unzip and play.

It's worth viewing Another Age as there are many examples and ideas that you may find useful in your own montages. The railway picture above is one of those created solely for this slide show. In addition to our Another Age slide show we also have a presentation for PC, Mac and iPad on the subject of Montage

We have also created a series of video tutorials on the subject of Montage for either Download or on Disk.

At some stage in the creation of our montage we are probably going to need to flatten all the layers together to add the finishing touches. Some of the final changes we will make need the image as one layer, but make sure you have it saved in its layered form first.

At this stage the tools we are most likely to find useful are the Healing Brushes and the Clone Tool. When making montages we often introduce highlights and they will need our attention. The Healing brushes are good for these final jobs.

In addition you may find the dodge and burn tools a help too. They will help you to subdue areas of the montage that need toning down and also to lighten areas we want to draw attention to. The Sponge tool set to saturate or de-saturate is also another useful tool for montages. The dodge tool came in handy below to ensure the old gold minor stood out as our compositional focal point

Many images were used here including one background over another – Sovereign Hill - Ballarat

Don't run away with the idea that composite techniques and montage is a complex process that needs days of work, hundreds of images and 10,000 hours of Photoshop experience. It doesn't and we can often make some great composite images with just two separate pictures.

In the series of images we show below it may not be immediately obvious that the images are composites and therefore are also montages. There are a number of little techniques we can use to ensure that our image editing work goes unnoticed and if we get that right, our images will stand out from the crowd.

The Image immediately below was created using the same Cockatoo, but slightly different shots of

it. It was created for a set subject of Pairs, but also to demonstrate layers techniques. The second bird image was flipped horizontal and blended using layer masks.

This original Raw image below looked to me like smoke from a fire, so using the Raw sliders I got aggressive with the colour and created the image you see below. In doing so I felt it lacked a real good centre of interest so I used a windmill that I had already cut out for another project.

There is also no reason why we cannot have some fun with the techniques too. This is just two images. The Ring Tailed Lima was shot in the rain and the hands were just perfectly placed for the the umbrella, so I thought, Why Not. Layers masks is all that was needed here.

The image below was created with just two layers and this one also demonstrates what I was saying about how a textured background helps us to get started with a montage. Here though, all we need is the textured bark of the tree and the river-scape. This is not a lengthy or difficult technique.

Now here is an interesting question. Is the image below a composite and therefore a montage or not? Answer at the bottom of this document.

I hope that the composite and montage is not that obvious in this image. I wanted to use the statue in a slide show I was making, but as it was in a fixed position I could not get anywhere that didn't have a fussy background, so a composite with just two images was made. Once again Layers and masks were the key.

Finally, perhaps our composite techniques can be spotted at times but in some rare cases it doesn't seem to matter. This image did rather well and of course the sail boat is the addition, small, yet significant.

Like audio visual composite images and montages add enormous variety to our photography. I always think of them as partners and its always fun to look back at some old images, perhaps shot on a digital camera that would seem lacking in pixel power these days.

Then take those images and combine them into something that will stand up to the usual tests in the modern world. Does our montage have interest, appeal and impact. Well, in that case I think we have done rather well.

Video tutorials on the subject of Montage HERE as individual downloads

Video tutorials on the subject of Montage HERE on disk

No, the pelican shot is not a composite, but I was accused of placing the Pelican into the shot and even when explained I could see there was doubt in the eye. It has that effect for a simple reason, the viewpoint is very unusual. It came about as I was taking the seascape using a 16mm wide angle lens and the Pelican flew down because their were fisherman around. The bird was close enough to my 16mm lens to touch and that is why the effect does look like it was created digitally. Just goes to show how careful you must be, before making a hasty judgement.

All words and Images copyright www.beckhamdigital.com.au