Shape Cluster

New Document

Open a new Photoshop document 600 x 600 px.

Guide Layout

Insert a new blank layer.

Rename it ‘Shapes’.

Go to the View menu > Guides > choose New Guide Layout…

Go to Load Preset…

… browse to your OneDrive folder, go into General CMS – COMPUTERS 8 folder

…then go into resources > Photoshop > guides and double-click on the “Shape Cluster” file.

Then click OK.

You should have this…

Select areas

Select the Rectangle Marquee Tool.

Then click on the 2nd option to “Add to Selection” (so you can drag multiple areas).

Click and drag from the top left corner of top-left square down to the bottom right corner of the square directly below it.

When you let go, you will have a dotted outline of your selection.

Go to the Options Bar for the tool and click on the Add to Selection button.

Then draw out the following areas…

Fill with black

Make sure the shape layer is selected/active.

Fill the selection with black. Go to Edit> Fill (or SHIFT+F5).

Your layers should look like this…

Clear Guides

  1. Hide the guides. Go to View > Guides > Clear Guides.
  2. Also deselect (CTRL+D) so you don’t have the dotted outlined areas anymore.

Drop Shadow

Add layer style Drop Shadow.

Change the settings as follows:

  • Angle: 135 (so it looks like the light is coming from upper left)
  • Distance and Size: about 10

Photo

Zoom out with your view so you can see a good area around your canvas.

You can find your own photo (that’s at least 600×600) or you can copy the photo below into your document.

CTRL+T to transform – make sure it’s fitting the canvas, no empty gaps. If your photo is really large, you can go to View>Fit on Screen.

[Enter] to apply the transformation.

Hold ALT and hover between the photo and shape layers until you see the cursor look like this…

Then click to turn it into a clipping mask. Your layers should look like this…

… and your document now should look like this…

You can reposition and resize your photo using CTRL+T.

In this photo example, I am not showing all of the photo, but resizing and positioning it so it best shows the Eiffel Tower.