Photoshop Tutorials: Fill A Photo With Photos

Step 5: Flatten The Image

If you look in the Layers palette of your new document, you should now have five layers:

Let's flatten the image by going up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen and selecting Flatten Image. Nothing will seem to have happened in your document, but if you look in the Layers palette, you'll see that everything has now been flattened onto one layer:

Step 6: Desaturate The Image

Go up to the Image menu at the top of the screen, choose Adjustments, and then choose Desaturate, or use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+U (Win) / Shift+Command+U (Mac). This will remove the colors from the image, leaving it in black and white:

Step 7: Define A Pattern With The Image

Now we're ready to create out pattern, or as Photoshop calls it, "define" our pattern. Go up to the Edit menu at the top of the screen and choose Define Pattern. This brings up the Pattern Name dialog box. I'm going to name my pattern "kids". You can name yours whatever you like of course. Then click OK to exit out of the dialog box and your pattern is now defined:

You can close out of that document window at this point, since we don't need it anymore.