Simple Polaroid Collage Fun (with actions)
INTRO
If you know the program called Picasa then you may know of it's function to make a collage of several photos. It basically takes the photos and puts Polaroid type frames around them then makes it look like the pictures are laid out in a tossed fashion. This all composes one completely new picture of a collage of many pictures.
I was playing around with this function and found it lacking because you can't move or position the photos and so depending on how many you want to use, some may be covered up by others. (This is not to say Picasa itself is lacking because I find it to be a very useful program and recommend trying it out)
I decided to try my hand and do the collage myself using Photoshop; this way I could choose the size and dimensions of the collage myself, I could also choose how to place the photos and I could add things like text and other styles that are not offered in Picasa's tool. I already had picked out twelve (12) photos of my daughter, one for each month so I could make a collage that would be sort of a year review of Sydney. The next thing I needed was to make a Polaroid type frame to lay over each photo.
I had previously downloaded a Photoshop Action for this very thing a while ago. Photoshop Actions are recordings of steps toward a specific goal that people can make and distribute to others or you can download them and load them into the program where with the push of a play button you can do things automatically in the program without going through all the steps manually. For instance, with this Polaroid frame action I had all I needed to do was go to my Actions window and find the Polaroid Frame action and hit the play button. This would then create the frame for me.
(You can read more about actions and how to use them in my article Making Photoshop Work for You.)
The thing is I wasn't happy with the frame as it was designed so I went in and tweaked it adding steps, modifying others, and deleting some. Eventually I came up with a new action of my own that used steps from a few different sources and some I thought up myself.
You can download my action here - This is a set of two actions, one will give you a realistic (properly sized and shaped) Polaroid free standing frame that you can move around and adjust, the other will just put a Polaroid type frame around any picture of any size and shape.
You can check out the result I ended up with here
NOTE: Normally I would credit the person who made the original action and in this case I would have posted a link so people could compare the two. Unfortunately, I don't recall where I got the original action from, I tried to look it up but was unsuccessful in doing so. Since the original is not mine I don't feel comfortable passing it around as I'm not sure if they had permissions requested about that type of thing.
However, there are several other Polaroid actions out there and even full tutorials on how to make your own (though I do not prefer them to the results I came up with). Just go to Google.com and plug in Photoshop+Polaroid+Actions and you should come up with a lot.
I would also advise people to just check out actions in general because there is a lot of cool stuff out there and lots of time saving actions as well that others have already done. In most cases the actions are free (like the ones I've posted on my resources page) so unless you find one you absolutely can't live without and don't want to figure out on your own, don't bother paying for them.
Once you get more familiar with actions I recommend at least trying to make your own. You can also play with the settings I placed in my actions and tweak them to suit your taste.
TUTORIAL
1) Create a document in Photoshop, I used 1600x1200 as I wanted a huge wallpaper to match my desktop resolution.
2) Fill the layer with black or some other solid color just so you have something to contrast the frames and photos.
3) Take a photo and click and hold the left mouse button then drag it to the collage.
4) Here you may have to resize your photo to something smaller, if so you should hit control+T and then if you look at the top of Photoshop you will see size settings for Width and Height with a little chain symbol between them. Click on the chain symbol so that when you resize the photo it will stay the same shape.
You can either enter numbers (I put in 30% because the pics I used were very large) or just find the corner of the picture you're resizing and hold the SHIFT key on your keyboard then click with the left mouse button and drag the picture to the size you want. When done sizing just double click on the picture you've just changed to accept the change or simply hit ENTER.
5) Now you will want to find your actions window. If it's not there in front of you then you should go to WINDOW and then ACTIONS. Once you have the actions window open you should find the Polaroid action or you will need to load it by going to the Action Window's menu and selecting LOAD. Once you have the action you're looking for just select it and click the play button at the bottom of the actions window.
The action will play out and give you a frame on a separate layer.
6) Now you can select the frame layer in the layers window and then in the collage you can move the frame over the picture. If the frame layer is not on top of the photo then you will need to move the frame layer above the photo layer. You can do this by clicking on the layer you want to move, hold the mouse button down and just drag the layer up or down depending on your needs. You can also select the layer and hit control+] or control+[ to move the layer up or down.
7) Once you position the frame over the photo you can resize the photo again to get however much of the photo you want inside the frame. It's ok if there is some of the photo showing outside the frame sides. If you have some photo sticking out from under the frame go to your Eraser tool, look at the brush settings at the top and select a square brush. I suggest a square brush because you're dealing with hard straight lines.
Take the eraser and begin to erase the parts of the photo that are sticking out beyond the frame. (TIP: You can click the eraser one time then hold down the SHIFT key and click at another edge of what you're erasing to get a straight line which can be more efficient and less risky of erasing too much and having to back up a step)
8) Once you have your picture the way you want it with nothing showing outside the frame and no space erased or exposed inside the frame you can secure the picture to the frame. Go to you layers window and select the frame layer. Now click the little check box on the right and a chain icon should appear in the little check box.
This means the layers are linked. You can leave them like this so that every change you make to one the other layer will also follow. So if you were to move the frame the photo under it will move with it. Alternatively you could also merge the two layers into one by hitting Control+E. The only issue here would be if you wanted to change something about either individual layer, if they are merged you can not change one without affecting the other, if they are only linked you can unlink them at any time and make changes.
9) To add some style to your collage you can hit Control+T and use the size and shape arrows around to resize or rotate the frame/photo. (TIP: If you hold the shift key while you make your changes with your mouse the movements are more deliberate. EXAMPLE: Holding the Shift Key while rotating the picture will set it to rotate to a 45 Degree angle, then a 90 Degree angle, and so on -- rotating it without holding the shift key will leave it freehand)
10) Now, repeat these steps to add other photos and you will have your own cool little Polaroid frame collage.
That's it for now, I'll try to add photos to help later.
Enjoy!
If you know the program called Picasa then you may know of it's function to make a collage of several photos. It basically takes the photos and puts Polaroid type frames around them then makes it look like the pictures are laid out in a tossed fashion. This all composes one completely new picture of a collage of many pictures.
I was playing around with this function and found it lacking because you can't move or position the photos and so depending on how many you want to use, some may be covered up by others. (This is not to say Picasa itself is lacking because I find it to be a very useful program and recommend trying it out)
I decided to try my hand and do the collage myself using Photoshop; this way I could choose the size and dimensions of the collage myself, I could also choose how to place the photos and I could add things like text and other styles that are not offered in Picasa's tool. I already had picked out twelve (12) photos of my daughter, one for each month so I could make a collage that would be sort of a year review of Sydney. The next thing I needed was to make a Polaroid type frame to lay over each photo.
I had previously downloaded a Photoshop Action for this very thing a while ago. Photoshop Actions are recordings of steps toward a specific goal that people can make and distribute to others or you can download them and load them into the program where with the push of a play button you can do things automatically in the program without going through all the steps manually. For instance, with this Polaroid frame action I had all I needed to do was go to my Actions window and find the Polaroid Frame action and hit the play button. This would then create the frame for me.
(You can read more about actions and how to use them in my article Making Photoshop Work for You.)
The thing is I wasn't happy with the frame as it was designed so I went in and tweaked it adding steps, modifying others, and deleting some. Eventually I came up with a new action of my own that used steps from a few different sources and some I thought up myself.
You can download my action here - This is a set of two actions, one will give you a realistic (properly sized and shaped) Polaroid free standing frame that you can move around and adjust, the other will just put a Polaroid type frame around any picture of any size and shape.
You can check out the result I ended up with here
NOTE: Normally I would credit the person who made the original action and in this case I would have posted a link so people could compare the two. Unfortunately, I don't recall where I got the original action from, I tried to look it up but was unsuccessful in doing so. Since the original is not mine I don't feel comfortable passing it around as I'm not sure if they had permissions requested about that type of thing.
However, there are several other Polaroid actions out there and even full tutorials on how to make your own (though I do not prefer them to the results I came up with). Just go to Google.com and plug in Photoshop+Polaroid+Actions and you should come up with a lot.
I would also advise people to just check out actions in general because there is a lot of cool stuff out there and lots of time saving actions as well that others have already done. In most cases the actions are free (like the ones I've posted on my resources page) so unless you find one you absolutely can't live without and don't want to figure out on your own, don't bother paying for them.
Once you get more familiar with actions I recommend at least trying to make your own. You can also play with the settings I placed in my actions and tweak them to suit your taste.
TUTORIAL
1) Create a document in Photoshop, I used 1600x1200 as I wanted a huge wallpaper to match my desktop resolution.
2) Fill the layer with black or some other solid color just so you have something to contrast the frames and photos.
3) Take a photo and click and hold the left mouse button then drag it to the collage.
4) Here you may have to resize your photo to something smaller, if so you should hit control+T and then if you look at the top of Photoshop you will see size settings for Width and Height with a little chain symbol between them. Click on the chain symbol so that when you resize the photo it will stay the same shape.
You can either enter numbers (I put in 30% because the pics I used were very large) or just find the corner of the picture you're resizing and hold the SHIFT key on your keyboard then click with the left mouse button and drag the picture to the size you want. When done sizing just double click on the picture you've just changed to accept the change or simply hit ENTER.
5) Now you will want to find your actions window. If it's not there in front of you then you should go to WINDOW and then ACTIONS. Once you have the actions window open you should find the Polaroid action or you will need to load it by going to the Action Window's menu and selecting LOAD. Once you have the action you're looking for just select it and click the play button at the bottom of the actions window.
The action will play out and give you a frame on a separate layer.
6) Now you can select the frame layer in the layers window and then in the collage you can move the frame over the picture. If the frame layer is not on top of the photo then you will need to move the frame layer above the photo layer. You can do this by clicking on the layer you want to move, hold the mouse button down and just drag the layer up or down depending on your needs. You can also select the layer and hit control+] or control+[ to move the layer up or down.
7) Once you position the frame over the photo you can resize the photo again to get however much of the photo you want inside the frame. It's ok if there is some of the photo showing outside the frame sides. If you have some photo sticking out from under the frame go to your Eraser tool, look at the brush settings at the top and select a square brush. I suggest a square brush because you're dealing with hard straight lines.
Take the eraser and begin to erase the parts of the photo that are sticking out beyond the frame. (TIP: You can click the eraser one time then hold down the SHIFT key and click at another edge of what you're erasing to get a straight line which can be more efficient and less risky of erasing too much and having to back up a step)
8) Once you have your picture the way you want it with nothing showing outside the frame and no space erased or exposed inside the frame you can secure the picture to the frame. Go to you layers window and select the frame layer. Now click the little check box on the right and a chain icon should appear in the little check box.
This means the layers are linked. You can leave them like this so that every change you make to one the other layer will also follow. So if you were to move the frame the photo under it will move with it. Alternatively you could also merge the two layers into one by hitting Control+E. The only issue here would be if you wanted to change something about either individual layer, if they are merged you can not change one without affecting the other, if they are only linked you can unlink them at any time and make changes.
9) To add some style to your collage you can hit Control+T and use the size and shape arrows around to resize or rotate the frame/photo. (TIP: If you hold the shift key while you make your changes with your mouse the movements are more deliberate. EXAMPLE: Holding the Shift Key while rotating the picture will set it to rotate to a 45 Degree angle, then a 90 Degree angle, and so on -- rotating it without holding the shift key will leave it freehand)
10) Now, repeat these steps to add other photos and you will have your own cool little Polaroid frame collage.
That's it for now, I'll try to add photos to help later.
Enjoy!
NIce article. I've found the best way to trim the images below the frame is as follows.
Activate the image layer (which is below the frame
Marquee tool
Select just outside the frame (ie on the white bit of the polaroid frame.
Select Inverse (ctrl-shift-i)
Delete
Then you trim the image nicely to a size just larger then the aperture in the frame
Reply to this
This is true, using the marquis tool is another good way. Not necessarily the best way, but it's a viable option. The only reason I say it's not necessarily the best way is because that's pretty much subjective and depends on the project, the user, and the user's objectives.
The reason I use the eraser tool is because I don't need to clip the entire picture, just what's hanging out from the frame. It's much easier for me to grab the eraser and hold shift to stroke off one edge than it would be to grab the marquis tool, make sure it's measured out the right size selection, then invert the selection and delete all the over hang.
Thanks for the feedback!
Reply to this