Make Photos Come to Life in Photoshop

In this tutorial, we will learn how to make photos come to life in Photoshop.

Tutorial Details

Program: Photoshop CS5

Estimated Completion Time: 40-50 Minutes

Tutorial Assets

The following assets were used in the creation of this tutorial.

* Grunge texture
* Wood texture
* Hut image
* Tiger image
* Air balloons
* Butterfly image by barryed

Tutorial Steps

Step 1

Create a new document with Width 1200px and Height 1000px.

Step 2

Click on the icon of ‘create new fill or adjustment layer’ and select the option of ‘Gradient’. Use the settings as shown below.

Step 3

Open the ‘grunge texture’ and press Ctrl+ A to select it, and then press Ctrl+ C to copy the selection. Come back to your document and press Ctrl+ V to paste the texture here. You can resize the texture using ‘free transform tool’. For activating ‘free transform tool’ press Ctrl+ T. Change the blending mode of texture layer to ‘overlay’ and reduce its opacity to ‘80%’.

Step 4

Open the ‘wood texture’ and paste it in your document in the same way as explained in step 3. Now go to Edit > Transform > Distort. Arrange the wood texture as shown below.

Create a new layer by going to Layer > New layer. Select the ‘Rectangular marquee tool’ and draw a rectangle as shown below. Fill this rectangle with # 4d2b00 color using ‘paint bucket tool’.

Draw another rectangle below the newly formed rectangle and fill it with # 2b1800 color.

Step 5

Click on the 2nd rectangle layer and go to Layer > Layer style > Inner shadow. Use the given settings.

Collect all the layers in a new group. To do so, press ‘Shift’ key and click on the thumbnails of all the layers to select them. Then go to Layer > Group layers. Label this group as ‘background’.

Step 6

Next, we’ll make frame for the photos. Create a new layer; select the ‘rectangle tool’ to draw an appropriate rectangle. Then click on the icon of ‘subtract from shape area’ from the top options bar and draw another rectangle inside the previously formed rectangle, leaving a proper frame.

Now make few copies of the frame layer by going to Layer > Duplicate layer. Now go to Edit > Transform > Distort. We’ll arrange these frames on the table using ‘Distort’.

Place the rest of frames on table using same technique.

Step 7

Open the ‘Hut’ image and paste it in your document at top of rest of the layers. Resize the image according to need. Now select the ‘Hut’ using any selection tool, here we’ll select it using ‘pen tool’. Select ‘pen tool’ and choose the option of ‘Shape layers’ from the top options bar and reduce the opacity of this layer to 0% so you can see the image below to trace it. Now make a path all around the Hut area as shown below.

Now right click and select the option of ‘make selection’. After that, click on the hut image layer and copy the selection and paste it on a new layer. In this way, we’ve separated the hut from the image.

Now click on the original hut image layer and select a rectangular area on it using ‘rectangular marquee tool’ as shown below.

Copy this rectangular selection and paste it on a new layer. Place this layer just below one of the frames layer and arrange it according to the frame using ‘Distort’ option as shown below.

Place the ‘Hut’ on this frame after decreasing its size. And then expand its top part using ‘Distort’.

Step 8

Arrange rest of the photos in the same way as explained in step 7.

Step 9

Click on one of the photo frame layer and go to Layer > Layer style > Drop shadow. Use the given settings for it.

Right click on this layer and select the option of ‘copy layer style’, then right click on the frame layers one by one and select the option of ‘paste layer style’ to add shadow.