If you have made a collage in photoshop and you want it to look like it was actually a photo of objects. How do you make it look more like an actual photo rather than a bunch of images lobbed together in Photoshop.
Is there a filter or somthing you should use?
Ive put drop shaddows on each object.
Do i alter the contrast of the background images?

Any help or ideas would be good.
Thanks

That’s hard! Every object will have been shot differently, different light, shadow, focus etc. It’s always going to look like a collage.
Be easier to get all the objects and photograph them together!

Depends on what overall effect you’re looking for.

If you’re trying to make it look like all the photos are from different sources, altering contrast, adding photo filters to slightly modify some of the photos could help that. You could add a tear effect to the edges of each photo, maybe a page curl. I’d keep any drop shadows really small and subtle, if at all. The pieces of paper really wouldn’t throw much shadow if they were stuck down.

Or, are you trying to comp things together in a image e.g. adding stuff to a photo of an empty table? That’s a whole other ballgame…

You’d be looking to make sure the light sources are in line, the perspectives match, the colour balance is the same. De-fringing the new objects to help them blend into the background etc.

Hope that helps.

difficult to say without looking at the objects.
there are so many things to consider.
perspective of the objects if shot on different focal lengths or from different heights.
sharpness, if objects are behind/infront are they all going to be sharp? is the background sharp from front to back? the objects will need to match.
shadows will need to look natural.
contrast. were they all lit the same?
you would be looking at curves/saturation/hue layers on each to get them to match plus some transforming/distortion.
your paths and masks will have to be spot on too.

comping stuff together is much easier if you shoot with this in mind.
it can be a right mare if the files are from different sources especially if the sharpness/noise varies between files.