"collages" of photos (for Helena Puck)

[Diane B.]

(Re making image collages for clay or anything else, in response to your question):

So here are the collages I was able to do (after a frustrating learning curve) on my baby-Photoshop (Adobe Photoelements)... each one is clickable, then clickable again for closeup:

This one is the simplest... it's just a number of whole photos collaged together into one shot, some overlapping (it's my mother in law--baby to 76):



This one involved "cutting out" some of the images before collaging them-- cut out around the head/shoulders, and/or with same white background, one has an oval part of the background left in (my mother-in-law's mother):



And this one was the most complicated because one of the images is the whole "background," with smaller images and also a text box superimposed on it (CD cover art I created for a digital scrapbook of photos of my mother and her brother, including the actual scrapbook cover):




Diane B.

[Helena Puck]

They look really great. It's very encouraging to see what you've created, and I'm happy to hear that I'm not that only one struggling with a photoshop learning curve.

I was able to use a pre-set layout format, similar to your first image, using Adobe which allowed me to plug pictures onto the page and manipulate the shape and size of the picture. I tried to make 1x2inch pictures in that layout setting but it didn't seem to work.

I'll try to search videos on photoshop like you suggested and give you an update.
 

[Helena Puck]

I found this really great tutorial. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTyi3Qz5QwA

It seems to be working. Also, I'm using the same Photoshop elements. I'm not sure if it is a watered down version or not. It seems to work exactly like the video.

[Diane B.]

Adobe makes both Photoshop and Elements; they're similar but Elements won't have all the things that Photoshop has--nor cost near as much.  
Some things (names of things, capabilities, etc) depend on which version of each software you have too.

Many of the things you'll see in tutorials for Photoshop will also work in Elements because they're a lot the same (but not always), and Photoshop was just trimmed down to create the smaller Elements.  

There are online tutorials/etc for PhotoElements as well as for Photoshop, but often they're for the latest version of either so some of the names for things may have changed or icons/etc may have moved, or there may be more capabilities than in a previous version.  Here are some for making collages with PhotoElements:
http://www.google.com/search?q=PhotoElements+collage+tutorial
The tutorials for Photoshop are great for at least seeing where things *might* be in Elements, or what PhotoElements *might* be calling a function, though!

P.S. The way I did my collages was somewhat different than the video.  Never heard of "Transform," but may be called something else in Elements.  I also "cut out" my images (usually around a person's body, removing the background) before putting them in the collage, and dealt with "Transparency," etc, especially for the last two.
There are a lot of ways to do the same things though, even just in Elements.

ADDED LATER:  an example of just one of the Filters in Photoelements, applied to a photo:
http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/5169/arthurrodlikekasharibbo.png