This quick guide is how to create a triptych (or any multiple composite). It’s not meant to cover the ‘artistic’ side of things, but more the mechanics of what to do. It uses references to other docs as much as possible, and is based on Photoshop although I understand Affinity is almost identical in usage, if the labels or menu locations might vary slightly.
1. Have a clear idea of what you want to achieve.
This means having a good idea of the layout you want and the relative size(s) and shape(s) of your images.
2. Prepare the images.
Do any adjustments to the images you want to place ahead of time – you can add a bit of adjustment when placed, but the less you have to do the better. You can export the images as jpeg, or have them as layers inside Photoshop, ore even just have them in Lightroom. It makes sense if there is a bit of extra space around your images, so that you can do small adjustments in placement later.
3. Create the canvas – so a new file, and the size will depend on your images sizes, how big you want your margins, and how big the gutters are between them.
4. Add some Guides. These will control the placement of your images. In photoshop, they are under the ‘View’ menu.
There is a useful page on guides here, but for some reason it doesn’t really cover the ‘Guide Layout’ which is what you need!
Key points :
- Use a ‘Guide Layout’ – set the margins and gutters as you like, but leave the image size empty for simplicity. This does all the heavy lifting for you of working out column widths etc
- Make sure you enable ‘Snap to..’ Guides.
- Lock guides once in place when you are happy, otherwise it’s easy to accidentally move them.
5. Into each location you want an image, place a ‘Frame’
There is a useful page on frames here.
Your fames should ‘snap’ to the guides to get the placement exact.
6. Drag your images into the frames.
Once they are in the frame, you can zoom in/out in the image and move it around, but only the part ‘under’ the frame will be shown. This is where the ‘extra’ size can be handy to get you elements to line up aesthetically.
Tip : Press Ctrl (Mac: Command) ; (Semicolon) to show/hide Guides, so you can clearly see your images.
7. If you want to add stroke to the frame, then :
In the layers panel, select the layer, and then the frame (NOT the image in the layer).
Open the Properties dialog, and enable the stroke there, set the colour/position etc.
8. Save/Export etc
And you’re all done!
That’s the basics of a ‘regular’ triptych layout, but there are lots of options – some of which are on the linked pages – especially re: Frames.