Crowing About Collages

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a collage of pictures can convey a lot of goodness!  Perhaps you’ve noticed my inclusion of grouped images on occasional blog posts.  I’ve created collages for all kinds of events including …

Easter decorations at church

School projects

The “Unity Sunday” Photo Booth at church

Even the poultry barn at the Brown County Fair (Can you hear them crowing with excitement??)

Creating collages is easy, quick and fun on the Picnik web site.  Picnik is a free, cloud-based image editor.  Use it by uploading your photos, editing and creating with them, then downloading the results.  Here’s some help from the WELSTech Wiki to get you started.

No login is required to work with one image at a time, but if you want to create collages, you’ll need to create an account.  The good news is with a free account you can upload up to five images for your collage.  If you opt for a paid-for account (I did, and for me it’s been worth the $24.95 per year – one of the short-list of services I pay for) you can upload limitless photos plus access additional features on the site.

To get started on a collage, upload your desired images then select the Library tab > Make a Collage button.

The collage creation window works like this …

Click image to view larger

Over time I’ve figured out some collage-making “tricks”. Sometimes I don’t fill all the image slots.  After completing my collage, I use other Picnik tools to add text and decorations in the empty solid background area.  I also use the Proportions customization slider

to change the dimensions of the images. All collages don’t have to be square (50:50)!

Here’s one collage layout which started out square.  I elongated the proportions, rounded the corners of the images, changed the background color to white, and left some of the slots empty to allow for text overlay.

Are you crowing yet? 😀

This post is a part of the Summer 2011 WELS Hacker series on the WELSTech Podcast.