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February 2, 2013 By Dru Cortez

How to Create A Basic Photo Collage Using PicMonkey

Pickmonkey-photo-collage-tut

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching and there are probably a lot of projects you might have on your mind to create.  But why not create a simple photo collage (using  a free, easy and  intuitive online photo editor)  that you can share with family, friends and of course all your loved ones.

The following steps should get you started quickly.

*Remember: Picmonkey is free to use and requires no registration.  (Of course,  PicMonkey tempts you with all the goodies and bells and whistles in the paid Royale features but their basic tools work really well.)

Steps to Create a Basic Photo Collage

Go to the Picmonkey website.  Go to Your Main Menu and Select the “Create A Collage Feature”.

photo-collage-tut-1

In this tutorial, we will be using  Picmonkey’s current “Sweetheart” theme sample pictures and include one of my own, so that I can show you how to include your own pictures as well  as use Picmonkey’s options.

Photo #1 shows the basic template layout and the main menu options on the left hand side.   Go to the “Photos” option and you can select  your photos from the drop-down menu.

photo-collage-tut-2

Photo #2 shows the picture of the vintage kitten valentine card image that I uploaded and the option now should read “From My Computer”. Your photos will be available to you by toggling between these two options.

photo-collage-tut-3

Photo #3 –  To create the layout for this example, select the “Layouts” option from the menu and then select the “Square Deal” option and choose the 2 x 2 square photo layout, four squares total.

photo-collage-tut-4

Photo #4 was included to show you the “Fabric Swatches” option on the menu in the event you wanted to use a fabric swatch image rather than a photo, but for this tutorial we will only be using the pictures shown.

photo-collage-tut-5

Photo #5 shows the template filled with the pictures which I just dragged and dropped into the template.  Notice the small grey rectangular area  that it is shown in the screenshot as I dragged over the kitten valentine card. When you see this on the template, it means that Picmonkey will be creating a new square or rectangle to make room for the additional photo being added to the layout.    Picmonkey will automatically adjust the template to the new photo I have dropped in and the photo template now has five photos.

photo-collage-tute-6

Photo #6 shows what the template looks like once I have completely dragged and  dropped in the photo of the vintage valentine card. So, the basic template with a white background (the default) has been created.  Adjust the images to your liking.

photo-collage-tut-7

Photo #7 shows the “Background” option on the Main Menu. You have four options in this menu, you will have to preselect or adjust:

photo-collage-tut-8

The following are the options included in this menu:

  • Spacing – This slider gives you the option to adjust the spacing between the photos based on pixels.  For this tutorial, we chose 12. (Which stands for 12 pixels)
  • Corner rounding – this option allows you to adjust the corners of your photos if you like by a percentage. I chose 15% for this example.
  • Color – Picmonkey allows you to choose the color for your background based on the rainbow like selector, the color picker tool which looks like an eyedropper, and by the hex# (a six digit number that graphic designers use to identify specific colors).  For this example, I used the color picker tool and picked the color from the vintage kitten valentine heart, and “Voila!” the background is filled with the matching color.
  • Transparent Background – Choosing this option would knock out your background and make it see through or transparent .  Keep this box unchecked for this example.

Now that you have finished your  creation,   you can adjust it to your liking.  When you have made all your adjustments, you will now save your photo collage to your computer.

Photo #8 shows you what the menu option looks like once you click the “save” button above your template.  Picmonkey usually gives you a standard file name for your photo and will save it to your computer. To save time,  I usually add a letter to the end of the name and rename it later, but you can name your photo whatever you like.

photo-collage-tut-9

A photo collage template at 1024 x 1024 pixels will print out at 14.2” by 14.2”, so you can use the change option to resize your photo at this point or you can save the photo to your computer and go back into Picmonkey and resize it with the “Edit a Photo” option.

And that’s it, you now know the basics of creating a photo collage.  As you play with the options, you will be able to adjust the photo collage to your liking and create a wonderful image to share with your loved ones!

You Might Also Like:

How to Use Picmonkey to Kickstart Your Photo Editing Skills

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Image Credit – Main Photo

Pictures were Picmonkey’s photo samples by C.Fisher Photography

Valentine Postcard

Vintage elements by Graphics Fairy

Fonts by Dafont “Susie’s Hand”

Heart Tape strips by PuglyPixel

January 31, 2013 By Dru Cortez

5 Great Sites for Free Vintage Ephemera and Downloadable Images

If the search for good quality vintage decorative collectibles and other items is difficult,   it can be just as or even  more difficult to find high quality, free vintage ephemera images to use for your digital scrapbooking or DIY craft projects.   

You can find yourself spending hours searching on Google, Flickr or Bing, just to find a good quality image and then to find out that the terms of use (TOU) limits you solely to your own personal  DIY crafts or the image can not be used for commercial purposes at all which includes, using the image online or on your web page or blog designs.

Vintage Online Resources

To some degree, I can understand the blog owner’s restrictions, too often unscrupulous blog visitors will download images and then repackage them as downloadable images, post them for resale on CDs, on their own websites, or sell them as digital collage sheets sold on Etsy or other online sites.  This is the dark side of having access to free authentic , vintage downloadable images. 

For the most part, what these visitors fail to understand is that there are copyright laws that protect blog site owners and their  scanned photos or images. 

On the bright side though, most vintage ephemera blog site owner’s  usually provide generous terms of use to their readers  because they know it improves web traffic and increased visits to their sites.  So there usually is a generous, kind community that develops around these blogs and sites.

I expect that this blog’s readers are above these concerns or practices, but even so that doesn’t change the fact that it is still difficult finding these images and blog owners with generous terms of use.

I just wanted to let you know about some of the better, free high quality vintage image resources that are available and I have found online.  

By high quality images, I mean either downloadable images  saved as .jpegs or .png files at 72 dpi for use on the web or images at 300 dpi as pdf files which are suitable for printing.

 Very often you might find free images but either the download sites are filled with computer bugs or excessive ads or the images are low resolution quality and require a lot of digital cleanup work.

So I compiled these sites as sites that provide great images and have generous terms of use.   At least a couple of these sites are owned by professional graphic designers, and they provide high resolution images in zipped files and downloadable sites that are safe and bug free.

Great Vintage Image  Sites Online

graphic's fairy website

 

Graphics Fairy– this site has numerous , high-quality vintage images, digital papers, textures, and other embellishments often saved as either .jpg or .png files. According to her blog intro she has over 3,500 images and according to her own description she is a self-proclaimed Franco-phile.   So, if you are interested in French vintage images as well as other vintage images, this is the place to go.

Those marked as .png files are digital files that show the image with a transparent background so that you can overlay them on your digital projects.  She provides images as pdf files as well.  On occasion, she includes reverse images that are suitable for iron-on transfer.  She also has her own boards on Pinterest with free downloadable vintage resources that you can follow to access even more vintage images.

website screenshot

 

Just Something I Made – A professional graphic designer, and often featured in Country Living and other magazines, her website has a host of vintage ephemera freebies as well as links to label companies who host her kitchen and home label design templates on pdf.  You can find a host of high-quality, vintage labels designed by Cathe Holden on Worldlabel and made available for free.

Vintage Moth website screenshot

 

The Vintage Moth– this site has an eclectic mixture of vintage ephemera and images. By eclectic, I mean the type of images that are not solely geared to home decor or Etsy syle type of images for tags and party decor.  The images are accessed via the right-click feature if you are using a PC or via your mouse if you are using a MAC.

Sweetly Scrapped website screenshot

 

Sweetly Scrapped –  A blog with an eclectic mixture of vintage items, from postcards, photographs, vintage advertising, etc.  The navigation on this blog is a little difficult but there are a host of vintage images to select.

fuzzimo website

 

Fuzzimo – a professional graphic designer who provides high-quality images of frames, backgrounds, etc., notebook paper and other vintage elements.  He provides an assortment of vintage items for professional graphic designers.   His site is not geared to vintage ephemera but he has elements that can work with digital scrapbooking designs or blog images.  He also has a flexible terms of use policy.  However, some of his free downloads to have commercial use restrictions.

Well, that’s the round-up.  I hope you enjoy these sites and they help you in your search for high quality vintage images for your DIY crafts or digital scrapbooking projects.

That’s the roundup of blogs or website, but I do want to mention that you don’t forget Flickr’s Creative Commons website or their Vintage Ephemera Swap Group.

However, if you want vintage ephemera images from this site you will need to pay attention to the license posted by each account as the licenses  vary per image.

 

This also is not a permanent list, I’ll be adding new resources as I find them in my constant search for vintage images to use in my crafting projects.

Related Post:

What is Ephemera? Paper By Another Name

 

January 28, 2013 By Dru Cortez

How to Use PicMonkey to Kickstart Your Photo Editing Skills

PicMonkey-Main-Page

If you were disappointed when Piknik the free online photo editing site went offline and closed up shop in early spring of last year, you needn’t despair because one of the best free online photo editing sites has found a new life as PicMonkey. ( On their website, PicMonkey claims that former staff workers for Piknik moved to  PicMonkey and the others were absorbed into Google staff when they were  bought out by Google+.) [Read more…]

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