Photomontage

Photomontage is a creative process that involves the cutting and merging of multiple photographs to create a single composite image.

Photomontage is the process and the outcome of creating a composite photograph by cutting, glueing, repositioning, and overlapping two or more photographs to generate a new image. In some cases, this composite image is captured in a way that it appears as a seamless physical print. Modern-day advancements have also made it possible to achieve this without physical film by using image-editing software.

This technique, often referred to professionally as ‘compositing’, is commonly known in everyday language as ‘photoshopping’, named after the software system. It's important to note that if a series of related photographs are combined to extend a view of a single scene or subject, it's not typically termed a montage but rather referred to as a stitched image or a digital image mosaic.

In the past, photomontage often involved physically cutting up printed photographs, a method used by magazine editors to design publications before the advent of digital design software. These layouts were known as ‘paste ups’.