Here’s a tutorial that you can use for digital or hybrid scrapbooking! You can combine your photos and then pring the collage to use in a hybrid layout. The technique is pretty simple – you make sure that each photo is on it’s own layer, then you erase the parts of each photo that you don’t want to see. Ready? Okay…

Making a Photo Montage

1. Create a new file in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements. It should be large enough that you can accomodate all of your photos for the montage, so go ahead and go to File: New and make a 12 inch x 12 inch file, 300 pixels/inch resolution.
   
2. Select File: Place and then locate the first photo you would like to use. Click the Place button to add it to your layout. This will show the photo in your layout – click the commit button (looks like a checkmark) to accept it.
3. Repeat step 2 for all the photos you want to use. This will place a copy of each photo on it’s own layer in Photoshop. Go ahead and name and save your file.
   Shortcut: Type CTRL + S (Mac: Command + S)
4. Photoshop only: You will need to rasterize your layers to proceed, so right-click on each layer in the layers palette and choose Rasterize Layer. Photoshop Elements rasterizes the layers automatically when you use Place.
5. I recommend hiding all but the two layers you want to work with first. To do this, just click the “eyeball” image () next to the layer you want to hide.
6. You should now have two layers (or two photos) showing. Make sure that the one you want to use as a background is on the bottom of the layers paletted – if it is not, just click and drag it to the bottom.
   
7. Click on the layer containing the top photo to select it. Now, decrease the opacity of this photo to about 50% by using the Opacity slider in the upper right of the layers palette. This will enable you to see what you’re doing, since you’ll be able to see the background image, too.
   
8. Activate your eraser tool (click or type “e”). Choose a large, soft, round brush. You can choose a brush in the options toolbar, which is along the top of your screen.
   Tip: If you hold your mouse over the brushes in the brush palette, the name of the brush will appear. I chose “Soft Round 200 pixels”.
   
9. Making sure that your top image is still selected, start erasing the parts of that image which you do not want to use. As you erase, you can make your brush smaller to get the detailed areas by typing the “[" key - make it larger again with "]“. You can also zoom in with CTRL + + or zoom out with CTRL + – (Mac: Command + +/Command + -).
   Tip: Erase a little bit at a time, which makes it easier to undo if you don’t like the way it looks. Also, the larger the brush you use, the softer the edge will be, so I try to use as large a brush as possible for this type of task.
   
10. When you are finished erasing, bring the opacity back up to 100%. You may need to touch up the erasing a bit at that point.

Once you have the photos the way you want them, you can un-hide the next photo by clicking the empty box to the left of the layer (an eye will appear). Repeat steps 7 – 10 with that photo, until you have erased all the photos to your liking.