Photo Effects: Turn A Photo Into A Collage Of Squares

Step 6: Add A White "Outer Glow" Layer Style To The Mask

In order to be able to see the edges of the squares as we're creating the effect, I'm going to add an "Outer Glow" layer style to the mask. First, I'm going to click directly on the layer mask's thumbnail to select it. I can tell it's selected when it has a highlight box around it. Then, with the mask selected, I'm going to click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Then I'll select Outer Glow from the list that appears:

This brings up Photoshop's Layer Style dialog box with the Outer Glow options in the middle column. By default, the Outer Glow layer style uses a yellowish color. I want to change it to white, so to do that, I'm going to click directly on the Outer Glow's color swatch:

When I click on the color swatch, Photoshop's Color Picker appears. I'm going to choose white in the top left corner:

Then I'll click OK to exit out of the Color Picker. My Outer Glow color is now white.

I'm going to leave all the other options for the Outer Glow alone and just click OK at this point to exit out of the Layer Style dialog box. The white Outer Glow will be added to the layer mask. We won't be able to see it in the image just yet because it's a white glow against a white background, but we'll see it once we start adding more square sections to the image, as we're about to do.

Step 7: Duplicate The Layer

Remember at the beginning of this tutorial when I said that most of the work is simple repetition? Well, this is where it starts. These next couple of steps will be repeated over and over again, but don't worry, they're easy. First, with "Layer 1" selected in the Layers palette, I'm going to duplicate it using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac). I now have an exact copy of it at the top of the Layers palette:

When I say "exact copy", I mean exact copy. Not only does the copy contain the image, it also contains a copy of the mask and the Outer Glow layer style, so we don't have to add another mask or another Outer Glow ourselves. Everything's already there for us. Also, because the layer contents and the layer mask on "Layer 1" were not linked, they're not linked on the copy, either, which is exactly what we want.