Recently I need to bring 4 passport size photos for my daughter’s school registration. Instead of paying RM12 for 4 photos from the usual photo shop, I decided to do it myself. I grab my camera with 85mm lens, a tripod, a light stand with reflective umbrella & 2 flash guns. I don’t have any commercial backdrop so I made sure the wall I chose for the background is homogeneous in colour. I also made sure my child didn’t sit to close to the wall to avoid the shadow.

Once the picture has been taken, I transferred them to my computer. I used Adobe Photoshop as my only tool. Just follow the pictures below, one-by-one & you should be able to do it yourself. Just one note, there are many ways of doing this thing. Google & you’ll find it.

To summarise every thing:

1. Take a good portrait with clean same colour backgroud.
2. Transfer the picture to Photoshop.
3. Crop the picture 3.5cm W x 5cm H at 300 dpi.
4. Select only the subject (I used Magic Wand & fine tune with Quick Selection Tool & Define Select) – Please do it till ‘pixel’ level.
5. Copy the subject (save in the clipboard)
6. Then create  3.5cm x 5cm empty white background file
7. Create whatever ‘digital backdrop’ you like (in my example I used gradient tool)
8. Paste the picture.
9. Position the subject properly using Move tool.
10. Merge all the layer. At this stage you already have a 3.5cm x 5cm photo.
11. To print 4  3.5cm x 5cm photos in one 6 in x 4 photo paper, you must arrange 4 of photo you created on a new 4 in x 6 in photoshop document.
12. Many ways to do that. Simplest method is copy once & paste 4 time & then arrange them.

Good luck.