Me and My Big Mouth!

I had several commenters asking about my collages a few posts ago, and how I did them.  I blithely said I would write about that in a future post.  What I failed to consider is the fact that I use an old program to do my collages and I cannot find a similar way to do that with either Photoshop or Picasa. 

Although I use Photoshop Elements 10 for most of my editing work, I find making collages with that program cumbersome and decidedly UNuserfriendly.  It is especially difficult to incorporate text with your collages.  If you use Photoshop and want to see more on making collages with that program, here’s a link to a tutorial on You Tube that will tell you more than I could in this space.  There are lots of free Photoshop tutorials on You Tube, some are better than others, but many are very helpful.

I have tried many photo editing programs over the years but the one I keep going back to and the program I use for collages is Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 10.  This is an old program and has not been supported by Microsoft since 2009.  No matter how I try to wean myself away from this program, I find myself going back to it often for certain applications.  It is intuitive for users of Microsoft products and, although it does have its quirks and is a memory hog, it is a powerful program that does most everything the hobbyist photographer could want to do.  This program is old and no longer supported, it is still available on Amazon from several merchants.  I run this program with Windows 7 even though it is not listed as a compatible program.

With Digital Image, I simply start with a blank canvas.  I can size it whatever I want – usually 16X20 and that gives me room to work and to down size it later for web publishing.  I draw a rectangle on the canvas from corner to corner and fill that rectangle with color.  Then I adjust the transparency and add a gradient.  Sometimes I add a second color following the same procedure.  I can also add any number of textures to the background for special effect.  I save the background under its own name so that I can reuse it for future collages without starting from scratch.

I open all the photos I want to use.  With Digital Image, I can just drag the photos from my files sidebar onto the background.  From there I can resize the image to whatever I want it to be, and add special effects such as soft edges or frames.  I can move the image anywhere I want to place it within the the background and free rotate it as many degrees as desired.  After I have all my images placed, I add whatever text I want.  Digital Image has a wide selection of fonts to choose from and it is so easy to move text around.  One thing I really like about this program is the flexibility to move things around and format which picture is on top when I want to use an overlapping photo design.

Here’s a collage I created in about 10 minutes using Digital Image.


The other option is to use Picasa.  This is the easier option, and it does allow for some creativity, but it does not have the options that you have with Digital Image.  I downloaded Picasa 3.9 and played around with it a bit.  This is really a neat program if you just want to make a quick collage.

Here’s a quick one I did with Picasa.  First make a new album and place all the photos you want to use in your collage in that album.  Select the album and then select Create, Picture Collage.  This is what I got without any editing.



I selected a matching pink from the flower for the background, changed the orientation and size of the canvas, and selected one of the collage templates. 



I was unable to edit my photos from the collage program so they would need to be corrected prior to making the collage.  I was also unable to move the photos within the designated frames to allow for better positioning.  I suppose if I cropped them beforehand it would work better.  Adding text is not hard but there are not a lot of options.

I also made a collage without using a template.  I was able to change the size and positioning of the photos but could not control which photo was on top.  In this example, I added a border around the photos and positioned them randomly.  I accidentally got two of the same photo in here but you get the idea anyway, I’m sure   This was easy but limiting.



In conclusion, I guess the easiest and least expensive option is to download Picasa 3.9 and go from there.  When you download this program it will scan your hard drive and create a library of all your photos.  There are some neat things you can do from here such as using face recognition to organize photos and eliminating duplicates.  I am no expert on Picasa as I just downloaded 3.9 last night, but it is free and the learning curve is not too steep.  Just play around with it and don’t worry about making a mistake.  You get as many do-overs as you want.  The other programs I mentioned are available for purchase – it just depends on what you want to do and how much fooling around with pictures you plan to do.  I love the editing and messing around with pictures so for me it’s all good.  Hope I haven’t confused you too much and if I have raised more questions than I have answered, just email me and I’ll try to get a better answer to you – if I know one that is!!  Happy collaging!!