Photoshop Elements: Blend Photos Like A Hollywood Movie Poster

Step 2: Resize And/Or Reposition The Images As Needed

Now that I've dragged the beach photo into the other document, I need to resize it, and I can do that easily with the Free Transform command. With the beach photo layer selected in the Layers palette, I'm going to use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+T to bring up the Free Transform box and handles around the image. Problem is, this image is in "landscape" mode, meaning its width is longer than its height, and I've dragged it into a document containing an image that's in "portrait" mode (its height is longer than its width), so even though Photoshop Elements has placed the Free Transform box and handles around my image, I can't see any of the corner handles because the sides of the image are extending out beyond the viewable area of the document. To fix that, all I need to do is press Ctrl+0 to fit everything onto the screen:

Now that I can see my corner handles, I can resize my image by dragging any of the corner handles inward in order to fit more of the image into the viewable document area:

When I'm happy with the new size of my image, I'm going to press Enter to accept the transformation.

The beach image looks good, but the image of the couple behind it needs to be moved up higher. Again, there's a slight problem. The image is on the Background layer:

If I select the layer in the Layers palette and then click inside the document and try to drag the image up with my Move tool, nothing will happen. Photoshop Elements can't move the image because the layer is locked, and the reason it's locked is because it's the Background layer. Elements treats Background layers differently from normal layers, and one of the things you can't do with images on the Background layer is move them. To get around that problem, all we need to do is rename the Background layer, and the quickest way to do that is to simple hold down the Alt key and double-click directly on the word "Background". Elements will automatically rename the layer "Layer 0":

Just like that, the layer is no longer a special Background layer, and we're now free to move the image on the layer. With my Move tool still selected, I'm going to click inside the document and drag the photo of the couple up higher. Since I want to make sure I'm dragging straight up and not accidentally dragging the image a little off to either side, I'm going to hold down my Shift key as I'm dragging: