Ten Steps to Making Digital Collages
by Beau Sharbrough
If you've been reading RootsWorks, you've been seeing a lot of information about pictures. We've covered cameras, basic photography, scanning, and related subjects. Today we'd like to talk about something fun that builds on those skills: making collages.
You've seen collage picture frames in the stores; they have different sized holes in the mat so that you can put in pictures of your children playing soccer or riding ponies. With prints, it's easy to do--you just get a stack of prints and a big frame and go for it. You could even make your own mat if you got creative, by buying a sheet of mat paper, cutting out holes for the photos, and assembling it all in a frame.
Digital collages are the same way. You get a big frame and then you put in your pictures. Here are ten steps to make your own.
1. Choose your photos. It's hard to get the big picture until you have some idea what photos to use. There are several points to consider:
- Try to find a theme for the set of pictures--maybe they are the same person at different ages, maybe they're all from the same party. Maybe they're all people holding puppies.
- The larger pictures will go behind the smaller pictures. That's right--put them right on top of each other.
- You don't have to use the whole photo. You can crop it to get a particular section of it for the collage, or you can cut a person, leaf, or kitten out of one, and put it on the others.
2. Plan your layout. You can change the layout of your pictures easily--but it helps to have an idea what you want to do. You might lay out prints, if you have them, or sketch out the collage on paper. Give some thought to the following questions:
- Do you want the pictures to touch each other, or to have a little space between them?
- Do you want to draw a little frame around some of the pictures?
- Do you want a colored "halo" around some of them?
3. Open a new file. This file is your "big frame." It needs to be larger than the pictures, so they will fit into it. You can fill the image with a background color, a background image, or even a gradient, but remember that this is the background.
4. Open the photos you want to use. You could open them one at a time or all at once. I like to open them all at once. If your computer runs out of memory, don't worry. Buy a new computer and start over.
5. Copy each picture and paste it into the frame. Use the move tool or a free transform to resize, rotate, and position each photo. Two thoughts to keep in mind are:
- Layers make it easy to move one picture at a time. You might have to move a picture to the front or the back to get the effect you want, but don't flatten the picture until you are finished.
- Transparency. Do you want to be able to see through some pictures? Play with the transparency (sometimes called "opacity") to experiment with different effects.
6. Lasso objects. If you want to cut a person out of a photo, you have a number of choices. My current favorite is to use the magnetic lasso tool. Sometimes I try the magic tool for variety. Zoom in so that you can see what you are doing.
7. Drag them around. One of the great things about using a computer is that you can drag the pictures around. You might need to view the Layers window to do this. (That's where you set the transparency, too.)
8. Save your file often. You don't want to have something happen and lose your work.
9. When you have the picture the way you like it, flatten the layers and save it as jpg.
10. For April Fools, I like to put pictures of my friends into other pictures. It's sort of like the way that Forrest Gump was in pictures with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. If you do a good job on the lasso, and the two pictures have similar light, you can usually get someone into the picture and have it look okay. Resize, rotate, crop here and there, and you've got pictures of your friends sitting with you at lunch.
What
Software Does This?
I
like to use Adobe's Photoshop
Elements 2.0.
It's capable of doing all ten steps, it costs $99, and
I've already learned how to use it. If you don't meet
that description, you might think about a program like CollageMaker
from Galleria Software. It's $25, and you don't have
to know how big to make your file sizes, anything about
layers, and the rest. It makes nice haloes, but you can't
do the translucent effects with it. There are free trials
for both programs.
If you have PowerPoint and aren't interested in either of the others, it's a great program for making collages. You can paste in photos, resize and drag them, and crop them. (You can't rotate them.) When you're done, you can save the file as a JPG, print it, or animate it and let it run in a loop at a family reunion.
More Information
For links and more information about scanning, please see the RootsWorks site. If you want to discuss your scanning challenges, please drop by the RootsWorks Forums. Registration is free, and I'd be interested to know what kinds of issues you are facing.
Beau Sharbrough is a product manager at Ancestry.com. His articles contain his own views and opinions and do not reflect any corporate policy or statement by the company. The RootsWorks series of articles focuses on genealogical applications for generic technologies. Beau would like to hear from you. Stop by forums and discuss this or any topic related to the use of technology in family history. Tell us about your experiences. Please note that he cannot assist you with your individual computer and genealogy problems. Visit the RootsWorks website for links to previous articles and Beau's lecture schedule (next stop: Boulder, Colorado, in July).
Copyright 2004, MyFamily.com.
ACCESS A PRINTER–FRIENDLY VERSION OF THIS ARTICLE, e-mail it to a friend, or submit your feedback.
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Ancestry Quick Tip
Tinfoil Tombstone Impression
I was recently asked to visit a local cemetery in the Indianapolis area to take a picture of a tombstone. There was some doubt about the date of death inscribed on the tombstone, as one transcription of it gave a different date from that which a family genealogy cited. I was able to find the tombstone and take a picture of it, but I still could not read the date of death, no matter how I varied the angle of the photograph or the lighting of the tombstone. The inscription was too worn and rough to do a rubbing. Not wanting to apply anything that might have chemical agents such as shaving cream, I tried to think of a "dry method" and the thought of taking tin foil came to me. I took a sheet and gently pressed the foil into the inscription with a dry, soft sponge, then gently lifted the foil from the stone, and I had an impression of the inscription that I could then take and hold in front of a mirror to read. I can't say I'd ever heard of this having been done before, but now tinfoil and a sponge are two items I carry whenever I go "cemetery hopping," along with a whisk broom, probe, and flashlight.
Philip Naff
Indianapolis, Ind.
Thanks to Philip for today's Quick Tip! If you have a tip you would like to share with researchers, you can send it to ADNeditor@ancestry.com.
Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry Daily News and Ancestry Weekly Digest, please state so clearly in your message.
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