Inside Photoshop® CS

Choosing Image Material

Before you dive into a composite piece, it's important to survey the material. While looking over all the images captured for a birthday party assignment such as this—or any similar project for that matter—you need to keep in mind concerns such as these:

• Which image will be the starting point? Try to choose an image that will have most of the components already contained within that image. The benefits, of course, will be fewer edits. The less you need to repair or edit, the fewer clues there will be that you made any edits.

• Based on the starting point image, which components will need to be edited or added (or in this case, which party participants are needed from other image sources)? This question leads us into the next ...