So here's how this works, I'm going to walk you through step-by-step. Then you're going to go do it. Got it? Good. Then you'll find a faster/better way to do it and I'll be mad that I did it the hard way.
1) Open Photoshop. Best thing to do is move your menus around so you can see. Remove any that you have no idea what they do. That's what I do. When I discover a need for them, I'll bring them back. But keep the following menus available: Layers, History, Navigator. Really, for this, you only need Layers.
2) Make sure your foreground/background colors looks like mine. If you want a black background that is.
3) Next, go to File -> New (Or hit Ctrl+N) In the box that pops up, choose your width and height. To calculate this, I simply multiply the width of my images and the number of images I'm putting on it. I make the height the same as my typically tallest picture. You can always choose outrageously large numbers if you don't want to think. I often choose 20000 and 3888. But it's up to you. It's easy to crop them and I'll show you how. Background contents: Background Color. This is why we changed it you see.
4) When you hit Ok. You get your lovely strip. Unformed. Void of content. Isn't it pretty? Well, it will be. Yours should be at the top. I recommend moving it to the bottom. When we open our photos, we still want this strip to be visible.
5) Next, we're going to open our photos. Go to File -> Open. Choose your photos (use Ctrl+Click to choose multiple photos). See why we moved our strip? Don't know why it's important? We'll get there.
6) Choose the select tool. We're going to pull the portions of the pictures we want. Fortunately for me, I've already cropped these. Use the select tool to select the portion of the first picture you want. Then right click.
7) Click on "Layer Via Copy". If you look in your Layer menu, you'll now see something call "Layer 1". You're going to click and drag this layer over to our black strip (aha, now we know why the strip needs to be visible!). Now you see a small version of your picture in the strip. Go ahead and close the picture you just did. When it asks if you want to save, say no. Do the same for the next two pictures.
8) It does not matter where the pictures sit on the strip. We're going to move them where we want them. At this time, I would maximize the window with your photo strip. I would also zoom in on the photo strip (but not so far that you can't see the edges). Now let's move our photos into position.
9) The layers are in your layer menu. You will need to click each layer separately to move the photo it corresponds to. I'll start with the one on my far left which happens to be Layer 3 for me. Select the move tool and start moving. Do this with all of your photos. You can create space or not. We can fine tune this when we zoom in. We'll do this after we have a better idea of our needs for the strip. So move them together with an approximate amount of space between.
10) Now we have a lot of extra strip. Let's crop it. Choose the crop tool and start where you wish (for me I'm not having any extra black on the top or sides) and end where you wish. You are cropping the area you wish to keep. Once cropped, zoom in again so you can better see the spaces between the photos.
11) Now, perfect your spacing. Then crop off the excess until it looks like you want. As a last step, we're going to flatten the image. Now select all of the layers and background. Right click and choose "Merge Layers". Now the image is in a more manageable size. It's also a permanent doing so don't merge until you're ready. Now save it, keep it, print it. Do what you want!
Enjoy. By the way, did you see the time? Yes, if anything is spelled horribly wrong and I'm incomprehensible...now you know why.
FFR
1) Open Photoshop. Best thing to do is move your menus around so you can see. Remove any that you have no idea what they do. That's what I do. When I discover a need for them, I'll bring them back. But keep the following menus available: Layers, History, Navigator. Really, for this, you only need Layers.
2) Make sure your foreground/background colors looks like mine. If you want a black background that is.
3) Next, go to File -> New (Or hit Ctrl+N) In the box that pops up, choose your width and height. To calculate this, I simply multiply the width of my images and the number of images I'm putting on it. I make the height the same as my typically tallest picture. You can always choose outrageously large numbers if you don't want to think. I often choose 20000 and 3888. But it's up to you. It's easy to crop them and I'll show you how. Background contents: Background Color. This is why we changed it you see.
4) When you hit Ok. You get your lovely strip. Unformed. Void of content. Isn't it pretty? Well, it will be. Yours should be at the top. I recommend moving it to the bottom. When we open our photos, we still want this strip to be visible.
5) Next, we're going to open our photos. Go to File -> Open. Choose your photos (use Ctrl+Click to choose multiple photos). See why we moved our strip? Don't know why it's important? We'll get there.
6) Choose the select tool. We're going to pull the portions of the pictures we want. Fortunately for me, I've already cropped these. Use the select tool to select the portion of the first picture you want. Then right click.
7) Click on "Layer Via Copy". If you look in your Layer menu, you'll now see something call "Layer 1". You're going to click and drag this layer over to our black strip (aha, now we know why the strip needs to be visible!). Now you see a small version of your picture in the strip. Go ahead and close the picture you just did. When it asks if you want to save, say no. Do the same for the next two pictures.
8) It does not matter where the pictures sit on the strip. We're going to move them where we want them. At this time, I would maximize the window with your photo strip. I would also zoom in on the photo strip (but not so far that you can't see the edges). Now let's move our photos into position.
9) The layers are in your layer menu. You will need to click each layer separately to move the photo it corresponds to. I'll start with the one on my far left which happens to be Layer 3 for me. Select the move tool and start moving. Do this with all of your photos. You can create space or not. We can fine tune this when we zoom in. We'll do this after we have a better idea of our needs for the strip. So move them together with an approximate amount of space between.
10) Now we have a lot of extra strip. Let's crop it. Choose the crop tool and start where you wish (for me I'm not having any extra black on the top or sides) and end where you wish. You are cropping the area you wish to keep. Once cropped, zoom in again so you can better see the spaces between the photos.
11) Now, perfect your spacing. Then crop off the excess until it looks like you want. As a last step, we're going to flatten the image. Now select all of the layers and background. Right click and choose "Merge Layers". Now the image is in a more manageable size. It's also a permanent doing so don't merge until you're ready. Now save it, keep it, print it. Do what you want!
FFR
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