A quick tutorial on turning an image into a nice looking stack of pinned up photos.
1. Gather your photo and place it in a new document.
The document in this demo is 350×350px.
2. Create the frame
Select the Rectangle Tool (U) and draw a box over the image, this will be the starting outside edge of the photograph.
With your new rectangle layer selected, turn it’s fill opacity down to 0%. The rectangle will disappear, but that’s OK. We are going to add some layer effects to it, which are not affected by the fill opacity. Double-click the layer to open the Layer Effects.
What we want is a 27px stroke, inside. Then a bit of a inner shadow is a nice touch.
3. Position and Trim Away Excess Image
Now that you have a frame on top, position the image underneath how you’d like it inside the frame. Then command-click the frame again to make it the active selection. Then click back to the main image layer and create a layer mask over it. For good measure, unlink the layer mask, select the layer mask, and Free Transform it. Hold down shift and drag the mask smaller a bit. This will prevent any image from leaking out beyond the frame.
4. Create Background
Because our frame and background are both white right now, it’s a little hard to see. Let’s give the background layer some pattern to make the photo stand out. Double-click the background layer to bring up the Layer Style. Choose pattern overlay and choose a texture.
5. Create Dimension Through Shape and Shadow
Let’s start off by altering our perfect-square shape and giving it a little warpage. Select the frame layer and Free Transform. Then right-click to bring up the contexual menu and select warp. Pulling in some of the interior egde points and maybe pulling down one of the corners will give the photo a bit more of a 3D effect.
Now create a new layer, above the background, but below everything else. Command-click the frame layer making an active selection of your new warped frame, but while still on your new blank layer, fill with black. Then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply a few pixels worth of blur.
This shadow is pretty flat though, as is. We can Free Transform this as well, for more of a 3D look. First squish the whole thing down vertically a bit from the top. Then bring up the warp again, and bring in those interior edge points. Pull down a corner for an unbalanced realistic shadow. Then play with the opacity to make sure the shadow isn’t too intense.
6. Stack them up
At this point it would be a good idea to grab the three layers that make up the photo and group them into a folder. Now if you need to move it around, it’s much easier. It also makes it easier to duplicate the entire set, just drag the folder down onto the New Layer button.
Duplicate the set a few times, and rotate each one to create that stack effect. You may want to give each photo a slightly different warp and adjust the shadow a bit so each photo has its own slightly unique look.
A push pin up top completes the look!
Nice effect, thanks for sharing.