Film Strip Photo Collage in Photoshop - Part 2
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Step 9: Open The Film Strip Document
Open the film strip document that we created back in part one of the tutorial:
Step 10: Rename The Middle Layer "Photo Area"
In a moment, we're going to be adding a few copies of our film strip to the photo collage document, but before we do, let's make a couple of quick changes to the film strip. First, let's rename the middle layer to something that will be easier to understand later. Double-click directly on the name "Shape 2" and change the layer's name to "photo area", since the rectangular shape on this layer represents the area where the photos will be visible inside the film strip. Press Enter (Win) / Return (Mac) when you're done to accept the change:
Step 11: Group The Two Shape Layers Together
Next, let's take the two shape layers that make up our film strip and group them together, creating what's called, not surprisingly, a layer group. Click on the top layer ("Shape 1") in the Layers panel to select it, then hold down your Shift key and click on the "photo area" layer that we just renamed. This will select both layers at once, and you'll see them both highlighted in blue.
With both layers selected, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen, choose New, and then choose Group from Layers:
Photoshop will pop open a small dialog box where we can enter a name for our new layer group. Name the group "film strip":
Click OK when you're done to close out of the dialog box, and if we look again in the Layers panel, we can see that we now have a new layer group named "film strip". Both of the shape layers that make up the film strip are inside the group:
Step 12: Save The Changes
Before we continue, let's save the changes we've made to the film strip so we won't have to make them again the next time we use it. Go up to the File menu at the top of the screen and choose the Save command. Since we've already saved the document once, Photoshop won't bother to ask us what we want to name it or where we want to save it to. It will simply overwrite the previous version of the document:
Step 13: Select The Move Tool
We're ready to add the film strip to the photo collage document. Select the Move Tool from the Tools panel, or press the letter V on your keyboard to select it with the shortcut:
Step 14: Drag The Film Strip Into The Photo Collage Document
Then, with the film strip and the photo collage documents open in separate windows, click with the Move Tool inside the film strip's document window, keep your mouse button held down, and drag the film strip over to the photo collage document window:
Release your mouse button, and the film strip appears inside the photo collage document:
You can close out of the film strip document at this point since we no longer need it. If we look in the Layers panel for the photo collage document, we can see that the film strip layer group has been copied over and now appears above the main photo:
