Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual

Arranging a Group Shot

Group Shot is another new kind of merge feature in Elements 6. Have you ever tried taking photos of a whole group of people? Almost every time, you get a photo where everything is perfect, except for that one person with his eyes shut. In another shot, that person is fine, but other people are yawning or looking away from the camera. You probably thought, "Dang, I wish I could move Ed from that photo to this one. Then I'd have a perfect shot."

Adobe hears your wishes, and Group Shot is the result. It's specifically designed for moving one person in a group from one photo to another, similar photo.

You launch Group Shot by going to File → New → Photomerge Group Shot, or Guided Edit → Photomerge → Group Shot.

The steps for using Group Shot are the same as for Faces, except that you don't normally need to align the photos, since Group Shot is intended for those situations where you were saying, "Just one more, everybody—and hold it!" as opposed to moving people from photos taken at different times with different angles and lighting.

But if you do need to align your photos, you can do that in the advanced options. Just place the markers the same way you do in Faces (see Merging Different Faces). Another advanced option is Pixel Blending, which adjusts the moved material to make it closer in tone to the rest of the Final image.

Note

It would be great if you could use Group Shot for things like creating a photo showing many generations of your family by combining images ...