Back from vacation, travel shots can be gathered into a nice photo collage using various images taken over time and the Paint Shop program. Here’s how to do it, step by step.
This workshop concerns the possibility of creating a photo composition. We used very simple techniques while still achieving a good visual result. The fundamental thing, after creating the background, is the choice of photos to insert, which is very personal but largely determines the success of our collage. In this step, a first photo.
We chose a series of photos that evoke summer holidays, the sea, the desire to idle, and devote oneself to complete relaxation. Let’s start creating the background that will hold the photos. We did not create complex textures by performing long steps, but with the tools offered by Paint Shop Pro we can obtain an excellent background using the predefined tools. In this second step, a second photo.
After launching Paint Shop Pro, we create a new document by choosing from the file menu >> new or with the shortcut keys (CTRL +N), entering the dimensions width: 800 and height: 600 or as we like leaving the other values unchanged. In the image, a third photo that we will use later.
In the styles palette there is a pop-up menu containing four icons, we select the third icon from the left, “pattern,” a dialog window will appear, and inside we choose the “old paper pattern” clicking OK. With the “fill” tool with default values, we click on the workspace to apply it and here we can start positioning the next images.
Now let’s overlay the photos. We open the first photo we chose and select it by pressing the shortcut keys CTRL+A (from the Selection menu >> Select All), CTRL+C to copy it to the clipboard and CTRL+L to paste it into the initial background image as a new layer; (from the Edit menu >> paste as new layer.
The image shows another chosen photo.
Now we select the photo with the “move” tool to position it on the left and resize it if it appears too large using the “deformation” tool. We place the cursor on the lower right corner and drag with the right mouse button.
Once the desired result is achieved, press “apply” in the tool options palette.
To give some liveliness to the photo, we apply a shadow effect from the menu “effects >> 3d effects >> drop shadow” with the parameters we prefer.
We proceed similarly with all the other photos positioning them at various points of the background; we open the second photo and place it on the right scaling the photo following step no. 8 and so on… we try to make the size of the photos uniform and center them within the background. We can help ourselves with rulers; to activate them select “view rulers” from the menu.
As you can see, we inserted the four images simply adjacent to each other, while the last one is centered relative to the others and appears in the foreground. We applied a slight blur effect as seen before and spaced the photos slightly apart.
At this point, all that’s left is to merge all the images except the background. In the layers palette, we make the background layer invisible by clicking on the glasses icon and with the right mouse button placed on another layer we choose “merge >> merge visible”.
In this way, we will apply a further global effect to all the photos. From the effects menu >> 3d effects >> bevel with default settings “soft edge” leaving the other parameters as default.
Now it’s time for the text; in the toolbar select the “text” tool and click on the image to make the dialog window appear. We set the font as we like and check “Create as vector”, so we can then easily edit the text later.
In the color palette, we set a red (#E22000) as the foreground color and a yellowish (#FFC118) as the background color. We chose a purely fictional text: Villaggio Beach Maldives, having also selected some photos of the Maldives
(editor’s note: any reference to real things is purely coincidental).
If the text is to our liking, we convert it to raster in the layers palette, with the
right-click on the text layer >> convert to raster layer. This way we can then apply effects or filters. From the effects menu, we can choose an effect to apply; we first chose a shading as per step 7 for the photos. Finally, we added another text at the bottom applying the same settings but changing the font.
Now we can see a full-screen preview from the view menu “full-screen preview” and preview in the web browser also from the view menu, we can then choose the formats and select the type of browser after which the format optimization window will appear if we exclude bitmaps.
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