Since posting this showcase of inspiring artwork combining geometry & photography back in 2014 I’ve wanted to give this trendy style of art a try myself. I finally sat down with Illustrator & Photoshop and devised a method of transforming a photograph into an abstract collage of geometric shapes. We’ll begin with Illustrator to build up a series of geometric lines, then cut up an image in Photoshop to create an interesting composition. A series of textures and curves adjustments will then help give the design a trendy retro style with plenty of processed colours and grain.
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See the full size geometric photo collage artwork
The artwork we’ll be creating in this tutorial has an old retro collage vibe with snippets of a photograph being cut out and rearranged into perfectly symmetrical geometric shapes.
We’ll begin in Adobe Illustrator to create a template for our geometric shapes. Create a new document then select the Ellipse tool. Remove the fill colour, but leave a black stroke then click on the artboard and enter 500px for both the Width and Height.
Thanks for this, Chris!
Just one thing in case anyone else runs into this like I did: When you click on the magic wand to start selecting the inner shapes, make sure the “Contiguous” box is checked. If it isn’t, you’ll be selecting all the shapes at once.
Awesome blog.
Lisa
Thank You for an inspiration!
It’s a great idea!
Sirje
dragging out all 3 channel curves… Mind blown…
As much as I wish you could have 3 separate Channels panels open at once, the screenshot in my tutorial was made with some Photohop trickery combining 3 images
Thanks for this Chris.!!
It’s really useful….!!!!!!!!!
Thank you, so glad it’s been useful to you!
This is so cool! I love how easy it is! Thank you so much!
Su
That’s real cool. Easy too! Thanks man! I love the other page too, the one with the collection of this artwork style. Real fun too look at. Keep it up :)
Thank you for your comment Eli, that means so much. :D
Great Tutorial! Thanks!
Cheers Sarah!
Nice tutorial and great idea… loved it
Just saw your blog its way too impressive :)
Cool Tutorial! Though I stuck to Illustrator instead of switching over to PS.
This Photo Collage is what I needed for my college event cover pic :) I would upload pic here when i create it
so nice , will be helpful for newbies also
Gr8 Tutorial, Thanks a lot
Great tutorial. I love these effects and so many possibilities.
Although it may not be quite as convenient as using Illustrator first I am sure it would be possible to achieve similar effects using only Photoshop, using shapes and paths.
No doubt it’s all possible in Photoshop but I find just switching over to Illustrator and making use of vector shapes and Smart Guides is so much easier!
Oh for sure — I’m just being a bit stingy at the moment and haven’t invested in a package which includes Illustrator ;)