Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you the most efficient way to create a photo mosaic portrait and how
to quickly apply the mosaic onto other subjects.
Open a high-definition photo you'd like to use for this project.
I downloaded this one and the other from Shutterstock.
Before we begin, if want to be notified as soon as I upload new Photoshop tutorials,
just click that "Subscribe" button and welcome!
The first step is to crop our photo to a position we like.
Open your Crop Tool and the Crop presets.
Click "Width, Height & Resolution" and the "Clear" button.
To ensure the effect will look similar to mine, for its height, I suggest typing in
1800 px for pixels and for the resolution, type in 150 pixels per inch.
Leave the width empty, which will free us to crop it to any shape we want.
Drag the crop's bounding box out or in.
Once you're happy with it the way it's cropped, press Enter or Return twice.
To zoom into your photo, press Ctrl or Cmd and the plus key on your keyboard a few times.
Or, you want to fit it onto your canvas, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
To see it at 100%, press Ctrl or Cmd + 1.
Place all the photos you want to use for the mosaic into a folder.
The number of photos in the folder should be the same for the mosaic's rows and columns.
In other words, if we want our mosaic to have 5 photos across,
there should also be 5 columns for a total of 25 photos. 5 times 5.
If we want our mosaic to have 10 photos across, there should also be 10 columns for a total of 100 photos.
10 times 10 and so on.
For my mosaic, I'm using 7 rows and 7 columns for a total of 49 photos.
7 times 7.
Go to File, Automate, and "Contact Sheet II".
For the Source Images, use "Folder" and click"Choose".
Navigate to the folder.
I placed mine on my Desktop.
Click it and click "Select Folder".
Under the Document section, the units are pixels.
The Width is 1800, the Height is 1200 and the Resolution is 150 pixels per inch.
Make sure "Flatten All Layers" is not checked.
By not checking it, it’ll allow us to resize each of our photos inside the mosaic.
The Mode is RGB color and 8-bits per channel.
Under the Thumbnails section, we can place them across first or down first.
In this example, I have 7 columns and 7 rows, but as we discussed, type in the numbers you have for yours.
Check "Use Auto-Spacing", which will space out each photo in the mosaic equally.
Make sure “Rotate for Best Fit” is not checked.
This keeps our photos from rotating.
Make sure "Use Filename as Caption” is not active.
This will prevent our photos from including their names below them in the mosaic.
Once you click OK, it may take Photoshop awhile to process them depending on the number of photos in the folder.
It'll stack them on top of each other in the Layers panel and create layer masks next to them.
Before we can adjust each photo's size and position inside its layer mask, we first need
to click off all the chain links which will unlink the photos with their respective layer masks.
Open your Move Tool and tick "Auto-Select".
Now, when we click on any photo in the mosaic, that corresponding photo in the Layers panel becomes active.
To resize and position the photo inside its Layer Mask, open your Transform Tool by pressing
Ctrl or Cmd + T. Go to a corner and press and hold Alt or Option as you drag it out or in.
To position the photo, place your cursor inside the Transform's bounding box and just drag it.
Make sure the photo fills the entire space.
Then, press Enter or Return.
Click on the next photo, which automatically makes it active in the Layers panel and as
before, open the Transform Tool to resize and position it.
Continue these steps until all the photos fill their respective spaces to your liking.
Go to Edit and "Define Pattern".
Just click OK.
Open back your photo and click the Adjustment Layer icon.
Click "Pattern".
Open your pattern preset list and scroll to the bottom.
Click "ContactSheet_001".
The Angle is 0 degrees and I'll make the Scale 30%, but feel free to adjust this if you like.
Change the Blend Mode to Multiply and reduce its opacity to 40%.
Make a copy of it by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + J. Change the copy's Blend Mode to Overlay.
We can bring out more details in the mosaic by adjusting the brightness and contrast of our main photo.
First let's convert the photo into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
To do this, make the photo active and click the icon at the upper, right.
Click "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Image, Adjustments, and Shadows/Highlights.
If you don't see the entire window, check "Show More Options".
It opens with the default amounts.
As I mentioned, since each photo has its own characteristics of tonality, so feel free
to adjust these amounts especially in the shadows and highlights.
For this photo, I'll reduce the Shadows amount to 10% and the Highlights amount to 10% as well.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!