Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. I'm going to show you how to create a fun,
color grid, mosaic from a photo. You can quickly replace the photo without having to redo any
of the effects. Open an image you'd like to use for this project. I downloaded this one
from Shutterstock. We'll use our image after we create our grid. Create a new document
by going to File and New. Name it whatever you'd like. Make its Width and Height: 870
pixels and its Resolution:150 pixels per inch. The Color Mode is RGB Color and 8 bits per
Channel. Then, click OK or press Enter or Return.
Click the New Layer icon to make a new layer.
Name it, "Grid". Go to View and make sure "Snap" is checked. If it isn't, just
click on it. If you're working on a version of Photoshop earlier than CC, I'll show you
what to do next in a moment. If you're working on version CC or later, click "New Guide Layout".
Check Columns and Rows and make the number of Columns and Rows: 10 each. Then, click OK
or press Enter or Return. If you're working on a version earlier than CC, go to Edit
Preferences and "Guides, Grids & Slices".
Make the Gridline every 10% and the Subdivisions: 1.
Then, press Enter or Return. Go to View, Show and "Grid". At this point the next steps
will be the same whatever Photoshop version you have. Let's zoom into the grid or guidelines.
Press "z" to open your Zoom Tool and drag it over an area that includes the top left
of the grid or guides.
Open your "Single Row Marquee Tool" and click the "Add to Selection" icon.
This will add selections whenever we click on our document. Click directly on the
top, horizontal gridline or guideline to make a selection. Press and hold the "Spacebar"
as you drag your document up to see the next gridline or guideline below. Release the Spacebar,
go to the horizontal gridline or guideline and click directly over it to add its selection.
Continue these steps until you've made selections over every horizontal gridline or guideline.
Then, open your "Single Column Marquee Tool". If the selection icon reverted back to "New
Selection", click back on the "Add to Selection" icon. Repeat the same steps over the vertical
gridlines or guidelines to add their selections.
To see your entire document, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
Fill the selection with black by pressing Shift + the F5 key at the top of
your keyboard to open the Fill window. Click "Black" and click OK. Then, deselect it by
pressing Ctrl or Cmd + D. Next, we'll place our photo into this document. Open your photo
file and press "v" to open your Move Tool. Drag the photo onto the tab of your grid document
to open it. Without releasing your computer mouse or pen, drag it down onto the grid and
release. To resize it, open your Transform Tool and by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + T. If your
image is too large to see the Transform's entire bounding box, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0.
Go to a corner and when you see a diagonal, double-arrow, press and hold Alt or Option
+ Shift as you drag it in or out. Fit your Transform onto your canvas. To reposition
your photo, just drag it. Continue until you're happy with its size and position. Then, press
Enter or Return and fit your image back onto your canvas. Since we have a separate layer
of gridlines, we can hide the guides by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + H. Make the Grid layer active
and drag it to the top of the Layers panel.
Open your "Magic Wand Tool" and make sure “Contiguous” is checked.
Open your "Magic Wand" Tool and make sure the "Add to Selection"
icon is active. Make sure the "Add to Selection" icon is checked. This will confine the selections
to just inside the one square that we click on, instead of all the squares. Click inside
the top left square to make a selection of its shape. Click inside the square to its
right to add its selection. Continue to make selections of all the outer squares that border
your photo. We want to make a new layer below the active layer, to do this Ctrl-click or
Cmd-click on the New Layer icon. Open your Fill window and choose "White". Then, click
OK and deselect it. If you want to reposition your photo inside the grid, make your photo
active and open your Move Tool. Now, just drag it. Let's add a few more white squares
to make the overall shape more interesting. Make the Grid active and open your Magic Wand
Tool. Click inside a few more squares to make selections of their shapes. Click back on
Layer 2 to make it active. Open your Fill window and press Enter or Return to fill the
selections with white. Then, deselect it. Make the Grid layer active and click inside
more squares to make selections of their shapes.
Make your photo active and click the Adjustment Layer icon.
Click Hue/Saturation. The selection automatically becomes a layer mask next to
the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. Now, when we change the hue of your photo,
the layer mask will reveal the changes through the white areas, while the
black areas hide or mask out those changes.
Check "Colorize" and drag the Hue slider to a color you like.
Then, change its Blend Mode to "Color". This will revert the image back
to its original tonal values. Make your Grid layer active again and click inside some squares
that you haven't already colorized. Make your photo active and click the Adjustment Layer
icon again. As before, click Hue/Saturation. The layer mask reveals the shapes of the new
selections. Click "Colorize". Choose a different color for these squares and change its Blend
Mode to "Color". Continue these steps to colorize more squares. If you want to remove color
from some of the squares, make selections of those squares and make the Adjustment layer
"Black/White". Next, we''ll change the grid from black to white and then, widen the lines.
First, to save space in the Layers panel, let's group all of our adjustment layers into
a folder. To do this, Shift-click on the top adjustment layer to make all the adjustment
layers active. Then, press Ctrl or Cmd + G.
Make the Grid layer active and click the "Lock Transparent Pixels" icon.
When a layer, like the Grid layer, contains both an image and
areas of transparency, we can protect the transparent areas while we edit the image
in the layer. Open your Fill window, choose "White" from the fly-out menu and click OK
or press Enter or Return. If we didn't click the "Lock Transparent Pixels" icon, the entire
Grid layer would have been filled with white making our entire image white. Double-click
the Grid layer to open its Layer Syle window. Click "Stroke". If your color box isn’t
white, click it and when the Color Picker opens, pick white. Make the size 1 pixel and
the Position is "Ouside. Then, click OK. If you want to reposition your photo in the mosaic,
just make your photo layer active, open your Move Tool and drag your photo. If you want
to replace your photo with another one, open the other photo and drag it onto the tab of
your mosaic document. Without releasing your computer mouse or pen, drag it down onto the
mosaic and release. Open your Transform Tool to re-size and re-position it. If you can't
see your entire Transform, press Ctrl or Cmd + 0. Adjust its size and position, fit the
Transform on your canvas and continue to finesse it until you're happy with its size and position.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!