Collage Images By Rob MacIlreith For Use with GIMP 2.8 Last Updated July 2013
Before Beginning: Have your collage images saved in your H:\Drive. You will have to copy and paste them from your flash drive or your camera card.
Open GIMP Click File and New A new dialogue box will open.
Click the drop down box. It should say PX as a default measurement in pixels. We are going to change that to inches.
Change width to 10 and height to 8. Using the keyboard is faster than the arrows! Click ok. This should create an 8 x10 working area.
Here is our working area. We basically want to fill all the white area with photos. The pictures I am going to use were shot at night so I am going to change my background color to a dark colour to make my job a little easier. If a photo is not quite the right size I might see some white and have to adjust my images a bit more to tweak them. Because my images are at night, making a black background may reduce my tweaking or cover up a small mistake.
Click here to open the Change Colour dialogue box. Pick the colour you want with your mouse. I clicked here for black. Click OK
Click the fill tool (Bucket) Click anywhere on the working surface and it fills black.
Here is another cool option The Gradient Fill I picked black for my primary colour and blue for my secondary. ( Do the same steps you did for changing to black, except do it on the blue square. Pick the Blend tool. Draw a line on the working surface and presto it fills the working area beginning with black and fading to blue. The longer the line you draw the more gradual the change. If you draw your line left to right, the color will change left to right. I did mine bottom to top. It also works on diagonal lines.
Ok I changed mine back to a black fill as that is the colour choice I want for my background. Time to open the first picture. Click File and then click Open as Layers. We want to open each photo in the collage on its own layer. Do NOT use file and open as this will not put the picture on a separate layer.
New dialogue box opens, find your pictures in your H:\ Drive. Remember I have done this at home so my drive choice will look different then yours. Find your picture and click open.
I now have a second layer with my picture. Remember you need to click the layer that has the picture you want to work with. I have a MAJOR problem. This image does not look right. Remember the Green Screen project. My picture is bigger than the working area so I need to scale my picture.
I used the - key on the keyboard to zoom out to see the max size of my picture. Click the scale button Click the picture. Remember to hold the CTRL key down so the aspect ratio remains intact on the picture - I am going to be picky on that! Resize to the size you want. Remember you may want to do this in small steps so you do not loose resolution going to small and then trying to increase size. Press scale to resize.
Move tool Scale tool I am doing this in a couple of steps. I am not small enough yet but I am gong to use the move tool and then zoom in and resize again. Do not forget unlike microsoft programs, GIMP and photoshop both have separate tools to resize and move so you must have the right tool for the right job!
Ok I resized and moved a couple of times since the last step to get my picture the size and location I wanted my image to be. Time to insert the rest of the images. Repeat the File and Open as Layers directions until you have your collage complete. (begins on slide 10)
So as I am working I have a problem. The big picture is covering part of the Chicken Burger picture on the top left of my collage. To fix I need to change the order of the layers. I am going to do that by moving the layer down by clicking on the green down arrow to change the layer order.
Here is the change layer orders and I resized the big image a bit more and moved it. Notice I am not working on the top layer. Before inserting the next image, click on the top layer again.
Here is my finished collage. All that remains if for me to save the file as an.xcf file and then to export it as a.jpg file. If you need directions on this go back to the first tutorial and review them.
Collage Picture Name: Rob Mac Course: Teacher Here is a sample of the finished project on the pass in template.