Most of the Photoshop books in print go to great lengths to explain how each tool, dialog and menu works, examining the smallest tweak of each slider and variable and discussing its effects on the image.

What they don’t tend to show is how to use Photoshop to achieve a task you’ve been commissioned to do – specifically, how to use it to create artwork that looks as if it’s been photographed.

Photorealism simply means making montages look real. Too often we’ll see montages where the heads are different colors to the bodies, where there’s no eye contact or interaction between a group of people stuck together in a single image.


In my view this is unforgivable: few photographers would be able to earn their living producing bland, emotionless pictures, yet those creating photomontages seem to forget the most basic of rules. A picture must tell a story – which means rhythm, composition, and interaction between its  constituent elements.