Merging Photo Boxes in PSE

Do you like using templates but sometimes you want to put a big picture over several of them? It's really easy to do that in PSE.

I'm using PSE 11 for this tutorial.

Open a template in "Expert" mode.  I'm using Becky Higgins' Digital Project Life Template B. Choose the photos you want to merge into one and click on the top one of those in the layers column on the right. It happens to be the middle photo when you look on the layout but  that doesn't matter.

Now hold down the Shift key and select the other photos you want to merge into one photo. Right click and select Merge Layers. Note you are merging, NOT grouping.

NOTE: In some templates the boxes you want will not be next to each other even when they're designed for one photo. Feel free to waste our valuable time, designers! In this case you need to click on the little link icon to the right of the eye for each box you want then right click and select merge.

Your three photos will show as one in the layers palette on the right and you will have one photo box waiting for a photo in the layout. Drag your photo from the photo bin to the layout.

It will land in the middle like this and you can see the three original boxes joined together in the layers menu on the right.

Drag the photo over the merged photo boxes and hit CTRL+G to clip it. Can't move it? Make sure you have the Move icon selected:

Here's how it looked after the first attempt at moving it.

It's not quite how I want it.  Go HERE to see how I ended up with this final layout and get some tips on photo placement and choice of template.