Action sports photographers all over the world use this technique to showcase a lifestyle/portrait image next to a crazy action shot.   It's a design that is very appealing and your athletes will love!You can use this method to display more images in your website galleries, without making your visitors click a thousand times.  Another great method involves placing two vertical shots next to each other to form a horizontal image.  When looking at the images, your potential clients will find out that you can shoot great lifestyles along with great action, very important!  There are a few easy steps in photoshop for assembling a composite like this.1. You have to start somewhere, so open one of the images in Photoshop. We are going to start with the action shot.2.  Now grab the "Crop" tool 

 and select the whole image.  Start from let's say the upper left corner and click and drag all the way to the bottom right.  You can start outside the image as well and the crop tool will only select the actual image and none of the gray surroundings.
3. Now use one of the selectable points to extend the image size.  Click on one of the points and drag.  Then hit enter.  Keep in mind that the background color from your color picker tool will appear as the new color next to the image.
 
4.  Open the second file, in this example, that would be the lifestyle.  Go the top menu and choose Select>>ALL(or by shortcut CTRL/CMD + A ) . Now go to Edit>>Copy (CTRL/CMD+C).5.  Go back to the first image that has all the empty space next to it and go to Edit>>Paste or press (CTRL/CMD+V).6. Line up the second image with the first one and leave a tiny gap between the two.  The gap color will be the color of the background that you have previously selected.
That's it!  The composite should look great, and all you need to do now is save it!If you have to do more complicated alignments of the two images, we advise that you start with an empty file document and then paste the two images in it.  This will allow you more flexibility because the two images will be on separate layers with transparent backgrounds.  Once you've created some awesome composites, we would love to see them in the Photo Share section of the APS Forum!