{"id":14706,"date":"2011-01-28T12:54:29","date_gmt":"2011-01-28T10:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/?p=14706"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:05:19","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:05:19","slug":"how-to-create-a-photo-mosaic-in-photoshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/how-to-create-a-photo-mosaic-in-photoshop\/","title":{"rendered":"How to: create a photo mosaic in Photoshop"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been fiddling with Photoshop during the last few days, looking for an easy way to create a photo mosaic. The idea was to divide a large image among a set of thumbnails, so that each of them contains a small portion and they all together make the original photo up. After a bit of trial and error, I finally got it. Here’s how to create a photo mosaic in Photoshop<\/strong>, in just a few easy steps.<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> Open a blank image and fill in the background with any solid color – to work more comfortably. Then create a new layer, draw a square shape on it with the Marquee<\/strong> tool (M<\/strong>) and fill it with white.<\/p>\n

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2.<\/strong> Create another new layer and with the Marquee<\/strong> tool again, create another square shape inside the original one and fill it with black. You’ll need to deselect (Ctrl+D<\/strong>) the previous one in order to be able to create this shape.<\/p>\n

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\n3.<\/strong> Go back to the first layer you created, and add a Drop Shadow<\/strong> effect to the white frame.<\/p>\n

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4.<\/strong> Now it’s time to group those two layers together. Create a folder on your Layer<\/strong> window by clicking the highlighted button in the screenshot, and drag the layers onto it to store them inside the folder.<\/p>\n

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5.<\/strong> Here comes the fun part: duplicate the folder containing those two layers to create as many thumbnails as you need for your mosaic. In my case, 11 copies – plus the original folder – was enough.<\/p>\n

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6.<\/strong> Merge all the folder layers into one (you can easily achieve this by making all other layers invisible and going to Layer > Merge Visible<\/strong>). Then import the image you want to turn into a mosaic, and make this photo layer invisible as well.<\/p>\n

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7.<\/strong> Go to Select > Color Range<\/strong> and click on the black areas of your mosaic, so that only those black squares are selected.<\/p>\n

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8.<\/strong> Make sure the selected layer is the one with the squares, and while all those black areas are still selected, press the Del<\/strong> key. Your work should look similar to this:<\/p>\n

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9.<\/strong> Now click on the photo layer to make it the active one and go to Select > Inverse<\/strong> to invert the selection. Press Del<\/strong> again and you’ll get rid of all the areas in the image that remain outside the squares.<\/p>\n

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10.<\/strong> Ta da! Your mosaic is done. You can keep the background layer or remove it if you prefer not to have any specific color under your photo composition.<\/p>\n

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I’ve been fiddling with Photoshop during the last few days, looking for an easy way to create a photo mosaic. The idea was to divide a large image among a set of thumbnails, so that each of them contains a small portion and they all together make the original photo up. After a bit of … Continue reading “How to: create a photo mosaic in Photoshop”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[2441],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-14706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334466,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14706\/revisions\/334466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14706"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=14706"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=14706"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=14706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}