Blending Pictures Within Outline - Help

Here's my unfinished work/test.
I don't know what to do to get all three images within the same outline. Whenever I use multiply the other layer blocks out the previous layer. Help!

Here's the psd file in zip:

http://www.geocities.com/panzerdragoon2001/collage_blend.zip

All help will be greatly appreciated !

I haven't downloaded the .psd, because I personally think you should finish the image yourself. I can, without seeing the image (I'm at work with no Photoshop, so I can't view it anyways.), give you some advice to putting all three images "into the same outline" as you ask.

With your layers intact (and making sure that each of the "image pieces" are cropped out of their backgrounds), press and hold the Ctrl button (lower lefthand of your keyboard) and click on the bottom layer. Still holding onto the Ctrl key, press and hold the Shift key. If you notice, when your cursor is still over the layers pallet, your cursor now shows an alternate image. Holding both of those keys, click the second layer of the image. This will "add" to the current selection of layer 1, the selection of layer 2. Thus, placing an outline around both of those images. Still holding the two keys, click the third layer. this will add to the selection the selection of layer 3.

Now you should have a selection consisting of a lasso around the outside of all the three elements. This is where you are going to place the outline. Release the two previous keys if you have not, and press this key sequence: Ctrl+Shift+N. This will create a new layer (if you didn't already know that). Go to the edit menu, select "Stroke." When the stroke menu comes up, make sure you have "center" selected and set the size to the outline width you'd like in pixels. Click ok.

You now have your outline, which surrounds all three of the elements without putting an outline where the elements may overlap.

Another option, although more elementary, is to outline each of the layers, then delete the portions of the overlapping areas (if there are indeed overlapping areas of the three elements).

Hope this helps,

Akuta Same

Thanks for the reply. I'll try what you just said.
Here's a picture of what I'm trying to achieve.

http://www.xach.com/gimp/tutorials/map/map.html

The only problem is this tutorial is for GIMP.

Ahh! That's what you are going for. Well, that's simple.

Place the outline shape (in the example, it would be the map of the US) on a layer separate from the three other elements. Make sure that you have a large contrast in color for the outlined shape (i.e. the outside black, inside white). Using the magic wand, select the outer color. Click on each of the three element layers (which I am assuming you have already set up in the areas you'd like, you'd just like to mask part of each layer) and press the delete key. this will delete any of the images outside the "outline" selection. If you want to do the fading like in the tutorial, use channels and gradients to fade each of the images.

Akuta Same