How to create a photo collage

[Steve Evil]

One of the assignments this week for my photography course is to experiment with multiple frames, and I've decided to have a quick go at doing a collage of my desk layout, so I've got a black and white fairly wide-angle shot of the whole desk and then I've gone in and picked out individual details in colour, like a section of my monitor, my cup of tea, mouse, iron man figurine etc.

What I want to do then is have the main image as the black and white and then effectively stick on top of it the smaller colour detail images to emphasise those.

As far as software goes I only have lightroom 2 installed on my PC at home, so is it possible on that, or are there any other free pieces of software that I can use to create this effect?

[hugoagogo]

gimp?

http://www.gimp.org/

[Steve Evil]

hugoagogo said:

gimp?

http://www.gimp.org/

Not sure that was necessary

Thanks for that, will take a look later and see what I can produce.

[hugoagogo]

what you'd have to do is reduce the background original image to bw, but then save it as an image with 16 million billion colours or whatever, select the areas you want from the unaltered original, copy them, then paste them on top of the bw image as new layer, rotate and move them about until they line up (with or without borders on the coloured bits

piece of piss

[Steve Evil]

hugoagogo said:

;)

what you'd have to do is reduce the background original image to bw, but then save it as an image with 16 million billion colours or whatever, select the areas you want from the unaltered original, copy them, then paste them on top of the bw image as new layer, rotate and move them about until they line up (with or without borders on the coloured bits

piece of piss

Ok, will have a go later, I took the original image in B/W on the camera, in JPEG, is this going to cause any issues or will it be fine?

[hugoagogo]

ah well, then it's different, you have to colour-in those bits yourself, then paste them on top

edit: just read it again, you say you've done that already

just select ( freehand lasso or a rectangle), copy, paste as new layer, then you can fiddle about with them, rotating, stretching etc

Edited by hugoagogo on Wednesday 1st October 11:04

[Tuna]

The latest version of Picasa has an 'automatic' collage feature.

You can select a bunch of photos, it lays them out randomly, then you can drag, rotate and scale them to make the best collage. You can switch between photo frame styles (so you can make them look like polaroids), shadows and so on.

Job done.

[Steve Evil]

Going to download Gimp at home later, but knocked this up on the work laptop just now:

http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=collagekh...

Edit: Had another play with sizes and slight position changes, plus I changed the background colour.

http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=collagewc...

Edited by Steve Evil on Wednesday 1st October 13:23

[Fetchez la vache]

Steve Evil said:

Going to download Gimp at home later, but knocked this up on the work laptop just now:

http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=collagekh...

I really like that idea

[4hero]

Steve Evil said:

Going to download Gimp at home later, but knocked this up on the work laptop just now:

http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=collagekh...

ohhhhh, you have a <ul> inside an <h3>

[AndWhyNot]

Collage looks really well done, good work.

That said, I think I'd rather see the coloured elements replacing their black and white counterparts more closely in the overall composition; a little more Hockney, if you like.

I do like the Polaroid effect, but make sure you don't go so far down that route you get accused of using one of the collage tools (fd's flickr toys springs to mind). Perhaps that's why you've done it the way you have?

[Steve Evil]

4hero said:

Steve Evil said:

Going to download Gimp at home later, but knocked this up on the work laptop just now:

http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=collagekh...

ohhhhh, you have a <ul> inside an <h3>

Is that particularly bad form then? I'm mainly self taught, so any html faux-pas advice is always welcome.

[4hero]

Steve Evil said:

4hero said:

Steve Evil said:

Going to download Gimp at home later, but knocked this up on the work laptop just now:

http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=collagekh...

ohhhhh, you have a <ul> inside an <h3>

Is that particularly bad form then? I'm mainly self taught, so any html faux-pas advice is always welcome.

well, yes. It's not valid html.

Should be:

 <h3>Welcome to the installation...</h3>
<hr />
<ul>
<li>How your pc...</li>
<li>e-Marker...</li>
<li>Computer based..</li>
</ul> 

Nice first effort with the montage by the way

[Steve Evil]

AndWhyNot said:

Collage looks really well done, good work.

That said, I think I'd rather see the coloured elements replacing their black and white counterparts more closely in the overall composition; a little more Hockney, if you like.

I do like the Polaroid effect, but make sure you don't go so far down that route you get accused of using one of the collage tools (fd's flickr toys springs to mind). Perhaps that's why you've done it the way you have?

I did use picasa to knock it all up, so guilty of taking the shortcuts there. I think once I'm a bit more comfortable using photo editing software I will move away from taking the easy way out.

I tried replacing the images almost exactly, but it didn't seem to work quite as well, as you have no reference of where the item is on the desk.

Also, did you get my PM the other day about the coloured gels? I'd also like a tip on how best to focus in the dark, as the autofocus simply hunts around forever and it's quite hard when focusing manually to see how good the focus is when it's really dark. Thanks in advance.

[AndWhyNot]

Steve Evil said:

Also, did you get my PM the other day about the coloured gels? I'd also like a tip on how best to focus in the dark, as the autofocus simply hunts around forever and it's quite hard when focusing manually to see how good the focus is when it's really dark. Thanks in advance.

Replied to your PM around the same time as my prev post.

Re focusing in the dark, you have two options. One is with light, the second with educated guesswork.

Firstly you can shine a bright light on the object on which you want to focus. Focus your shot then flick to MF so the focal ring won't move any more. If your subject is still not bright enough when lit to allow you to focus, go to where your subject is and shine your torch back at your camera (or leave it on the floor if you're working on your own), then focus on the light.

The other option is to learn your hyperfocal distances. This is the distance point at which, for a given focal length and aperture, much of what's in front of the focal point and everything that's behind it will be in focus. There's plenty of tables to refer to if you google or wiki it. IIRC, the hyperfocal distance is closer to you for shorter lenses and narrower apertures. Worst case is to wind your focus ring round to infinity but the longer your lens the less you'll get away with this for your details or foreground.

I seldom use anything other than my Sigma 10-20 at night. The way it diminishes the background (because of its short focal length) is a real bonus, so it covers a range of focusing errors (but will show up badly focused star trails or very close-up subjects).

If you've got any other questions feel free to PM me or post on flickr or grab my flickr shots to a thread here. Whereabouts in the country are you - I'm in south Hants and a few of us go out randomly every week if you're ever able to join us?

[Steve Evil]

AndWhyNot said:

If you've got any other questions feel free to PM me or post on flickr or grab my flickr shots to a thread here. Whereabouts in the country are you - I'm in south Hants and a few of us go out randomly every week if you're ever able to join us?

Thanks for the advice, will give that a go later in the week. I'm in Milton Keynes, so probably a bit far to travel down, especially at night, but if you guys are ever in Buckinghamshire then let me know.

[Tuna]

Steve Evil said:

I did use picasa to knock it all up, so guilty of taking the shortcuts there. I think once I'm a bit more comfortable using photo editing software I will move away from taking the easy way out.

I'm not sure why going the long way round for exactly the same effect is somehow more artistic? If you have a tool that does exactly the effect that you want, and allows you to make the creative decisions you need to make, then why not use it? The thing that makes a collage is surely the choice, layout and composition of the images, rather than the software you used?

I'm asking that as a genuine question by the way - not meaning to defend the use of web monkey tools or attack Photoshop gurus.

[Steve Evil]

Tuna said:

Steve Evil said:

I did use picasa to knock it all up, so guilty of taking the shortcuts there. I think once I'm a bit more comfortable using photo editing software I will move away from taking the easy way out.

I'm not sure why going the long way round for exactly the same effect is somehow more artistic? If you have a tool that does exactly the effect that you want, and allows you to make the creative decisions you need to make, then why not use it? The thing that makes a collage is surely the choice, layout and composition of the images, rather than the software you used?

I'm asking that as a genuine question by the way - not meaning to defend the use of web monkey tools or attack Photoshop gurus.

Wasn't suggesting it was more artistic, but Picasa did seem fairly limited in the choices you could make for borders, I think it worked well in this instance and I like the effect. For a greater amount of choice then you need something a bit more dedicated, but it's also something that would take me a fair bit longer to get to grips with.