Have you noticed? Photos of the beach or water often have the same layout. From top to bottom: sky, horizon, water, land or beach. It’s the objects or persons in the photos that make all the difference.

This makes them perfect for blending together into 1 big photo! And that’s just what we are going to do!

Here’s a series of photos I made last year, on our way to an amusement park. We were in the car driving and I saw several boats with water-skiers, so I started taking photos, ..

  1. Start your layout with a blank canvas, 12×12 inch. We can add a paper later, first I want the photos just right, because that’s the biggest job!
  2. Insert your photos onto your canvas. I started with 1 on the left as a base.
  3. Lower the opacity of all the other ones to about 50%.
  4. Hide them, turn off  the eye before the layer in the Layers Palette (fx)

Working from the bottom to the top photo:

  1. Make each one visible 1 at a time, turning on the eye
  2. Move it around, placing the HORIZONS of each photo exactly on top of each other.
    note: You can also play with the size of the photo, making it bigger or smaller to fit.

The top photo I chose especially for the dramatic sky with the clouds and the sun peeping through, so from this photo I’m just going to use the top half:

I know it looks a bit weird now, but you can see that all my horizons are on the same line.

If you are satisfied with the result, we’re moving on to the most scary part of the process: deleting parts of the photos, that we don’t want use.

  1. Rasterize your photos (if you haven’t done so already).
  2. Work from bottom to top, making 1 layer visible at a time by turning on the eye
  3. Use a soft brush to erase and blend

I left the bottom and top parts of the photo alone. The bottom parts of the photos I’m going to hide with a paper, because I don’t like them and for the sky I’m going to use my last photo, that will hide all the other photos beneath.

Play around with the soft brush, until you like the result. Don’t be scared; there’s ALWAYS undo!!

Look at that: All my boats are showing and suddenly this water seems a bit crowded!

From the last photo I am just going to delete everything under the horizon, because we just want the sky!

Then the finishing touches: I added 2 transfers and a sunshine element to the top from my new release Summer Splash.

Then I added my paper at the bottom, to cover up the road and the car mirror. Add elements and wordart …and you’re done!