Written By Steve Patterson

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we're going to learn how to create a collage of "warped" photos. Now, don't go letting your imagination run wild here. When I say "warped", I don't mean "sick, twisted and shocking", unless of course those are the types of photos you want to use. What I'm talking about is photos that we'll be bending, curling, distorting and reshaping using Photoshop's Warp Tool.

I should point out here that the Warp Tool (not to be confused with the Text Warp tool) has only been around since Photoshop CS2, which means you'll need Photoshop CS2 or later if you want to follow along using the same techniques I'll be using in this tutorial. There are more complicated and time-consuming ways to create the same effect in older versions of Photoshop, but the Warp Tool makes things incredibly easy for us and is also really fun to use, as we'll see!

For this tutorial, I'll be using three photos in my collage, plus the image I'll be using as the background, for a grand total of four photos (who says math isn't easy?). You, of course, can use as many photos as you like. Since Halloween is fast approaching (at the time I'm writing this), I thought I'd go with a Halloween theme for my collage, but again you can use whichever photos you like.

Here's the final effect we'll be working towards:

Let's get started.

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Step 1: Open The First Photo You Want To Add To Your Collage

Open the first photo you want to add to your collage. We'll go through all the steps necessary to complete our work on this first photo, and then it's simply a matter of repeating the steps with each additional photo you want to add to your collage.

Here's the first photo I'll be using:

Step 2: Rename The Background Layer

With the photo newly opened inside Photoshop, if we look over in the Layers palette, we can see that we currently have one layer, named Background, which contains our image:

We need to add a new blank layer below this Background layer, but there's a small problem. Photoshop treats the Background layer differently from all other layers (which is why the name is written in italics). There's things we can do with other layers that we can't do with the Background layer. One of the things we can't do is add any layers below it. The Background layer must always remain the bottom layer in the Layers palette. Fortunately, there's an easy way around this problem. All we need to do is rename the layer to something other than "Background", and the easiest way to do that is by holding down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and double-clicking directly on the word "Background". Photoshop will automatically rename the layer "Layer 0":

Step 3: Add A New Blank Layer Below "Layer 0"

Now that our Background layer is no longer named "Background", we can add a layer below it. To do that, hold down your Ctrl (Win) / Command (Mac) key and click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Clicking the "New Layer" icon adds a new blank layer, and by default, Photoshop places new layers above the layer we currently have selected in the Layers palette, but by holding down "Ctrl/Command" as we click on the icon, we tell Photoshop to place the new layer below the currently selected layer. As we can see now in our Layers palette, the new layer, which Photoshop has automatically named "Layer 1", appears below "Layer 0":

Step 4: Add Additional Canvas Space Around The Image

Since we're going to be bending and warping our image, we need to give ourselves a little extra room to work, which means we need to add some extra canvas space around the image. To do that, go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen and choose Canvas Size. This brings up the Canvas Size dialog box. Enter 150 for the Width and Height and change the measurement type for both to percent. Make sure the Relative option is not checked, and make sure the middle square is selected in the Anchor grid:

Click OK when you're done, and Photoshop will add the extra canvas space all around the image, giving us lots of room to work: