Photographic Mosaic
By Nannette Dalton

Mosaics have always fascinated me, especially those made with photos. I think that they can be an artistic way of expressing emotion and how much something means to you.

I thought this would be a fun idea for a birthday card for my grandchildren, expressing how much I love them with their tiny photos making up one big photo—a little surprise for them to find.

This would also be a great idea for a Mother’s Day card, with a mother made up of smaller images of her children. Hey! I just thought of a good title for that card: A Thousand Reasons to Smile.

Are you ready to get started? Okay, let’s go!

Step One: Prepare the Workspace

• Create a new 1 x 1 inch document (File > New > Blank File) at 300 ppi with a white background. (Photoshop: Choose File > New.)

Note: If I was making this for a mom and wanted to use all of her children, I would make the new document 1 inch by how ever many children she has 4 children = 4 inches. I would use the guides to mark off each inch so that I could fit a photo into each square.

Step Two: Create a Pattern

• Open a photo of your choice (File > Open).
• Get the Move tool.
• On the document, click on the photo and drag it onto the blank document.
• Press Ctrl T (Mac: Cmd T) to get the Transform options.
• On the document, click on one of the corner handles of the bounding box and drag inward to resize the photo to fit the document. (Photoshop: Press and hold the Shift key while resizing to maintain proportion.)
• Double click inside the bounding box to commit the transformation.

Note: Make sure that the facial features fill most of the document.

In the Menu Bar, choose Edit > Define Pattern and click OK.

Step Three: Create Photo Mosaic

• Open the layered scrapbook page with which you wish to work.
• In the Layers panel, activate the layer to which you want to apply the mosaic.
• Click on the Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer icon and choose Pattern.
• In the dialog box, open the Pattern Picker and choose the newly created pattern. Check Link with Layer, adjust the Scale to your liking, and click OK. I set the scale to 25%.

• In the Layers panel, adjust the Blend Mode and Opacity as desired. I used a Blend Mode of Linear Burn and an Opacity of 30%.

On my layout, I have applied the mosaic overlay to the photo and to the background paper to help illustrate just how much I love my grandson. What fun ideas can you come up with for using this technique on your layouts and cards?

Credits:
Page & Photo: Nannette Dalton
Tutorial: Photographic Mosaic by Nannette Dalton
Kit: Celebrate by Julie Billingsley
Font: Comic Book
Software: Photoshop Elements 13, Photoshop CC 2014

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Author: Nannette Dalton | Contact Us
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