Tips for multi shot collage

Just two test shots for a small project I am doing for my daughter. Do you think B&W or Color?

Also any tips on this type of shot?

Black and white love the photo.

I prefer the color version. I bet she loves it.

Yeah she thinks its cool..I think the B&W has more impact probably because of the contrast, but the color works too. I will shoot a better one now I have worked out how to combine each shot.

Those are A LOT of FUN.
I do NOT feel qualified to give "tips" around here, but when I have done these before, people on here helped me out with ONE very good tip = have spare clothes handy so she isn't wearing the same outfit everytime.
You've done a very good job there.

Very nice arrangement/concept. I like color version better.

Looks great, I have to try this

Yeah when we do the final version we will use different clothes for each shot.

We did a new one today whilst baking cookies. Actually this was a lot of fun to do and my daughter is starting to show an interest in photography..

Great shots all of them. What a great little model she is!

Can you tell us how you did this or point us to the info?

I worked it out myself..Its probably 'ghetto' style I suppose someone better than me does it more efficiently..But it goes like this:

1-Setup camera on a tripod or stable base. I used my manfrotto tripod.
2-Use a remote release if you have one, to eliminate camera shake or at the very least put the camera on 2 second mode. Also get your 'model' to stand center shot to get a focus point, then set your lens to Manual Focus. Camera in the last shot was in Tv mode. I also had my 580 flash pointed at the ceiling so there were no harsh shadows.
3-The fun part is working out the positions, it takes some trial and error, but with my last shot of the baking, I only took a total of 4 shots. *all worked well enough the first time
4- Take each shot, do not change anything, otherwise your WB might go off.
5- I shot RAW so I took each one into Photoshop CS4 without making any changes at the RAW window.

Then take the shot that has your model at the very back in terms of position. That is your base point.

I then switched to each photo in the series and dragged a marquee around each figure, making sure to take any 'props' and table tops etc.

Past each one into your base point picture, and PS creates it on a separate layer.

Now you can position it and align it with the base shot, and then proceed to use the eraser and get rid of parts of each layer as needed. This will reveal the 'base' shot underneath. It takes a little time at first, but after a while it is really quick.

A few tips would be to use the polygon selection lasso tool and use that to draw points so that you can cut away tables and corners very precisely.

Hair is the hardest part, but I have two matte or knockout plugins, Knockout 2 and Mask Pro. It still takes time though.

The final part is making each layer blend into each other. Although the light and color variations should be very slight, they will occur nonetheless. So you might need to adjust levels or HSL etc.

Thanks. I am going to get to spend some time with my 9 year old niece who like to pose so I'll probably take some shots to play with after she goes home.

Like the color better. I might like the black and white better, except that the girls' faces seem to be sort of blandly lit. They seem pretty active and they appear to be the main subjects, so the black and white doesn't really work as well for me. The other more contrasty parts of the picture just seem to be competing too much for the girls' attention.

That's why I like the color picture better. Putting some color back into their faces really makes the scene sort of come alive.

Just my opinion, of course, and it's worth noting that I'm not really skilled even on an amateur level. So take my advice with a huge grain of salt.

Those are great...Thanks for the how to. Now I am going to have to try this

This is a really cool idea. I have tons of shots on my comp but I don't know how to combine them using PS elements. I need CS4 badly. Nice write-up and great end photos.
in the first one I think different outfits would work a little better, but composition on the B&W is great