| 1. Select a background for your image. Below you will see a number of wood textures to choose from |
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| 2. For this tutorial, we will be using image E. You may save the selected background to your computer, or copy and paste. To copy the image, click the thumbnail above and right click on the full sized image once it is open. From that menu, select copy. In PSP, select Edit>Paste As New Image (or Ctrl+V).
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| 3. Standard image sizes for desktop wallpapers vary, but I usually use 1024x768 or 800x600. You will need to resize your background to ensure a good fit. In PSP, go to Image>Resize (or Shift+S). In the Resize window, change the Width to 1024 and the Height to 768.
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| 4. Next you will need a selection of photographs for your collage. I will be using screenshots and promotional shots from Stargate Atlantis.
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| 5. Select your first image. This will be the largest image in the collage. Open this image in PSP9. To give the image the appearance of a photo, we will add a white border to all sides of the image. Go to Image>Add Borders. Change the color (if necessary) to white by clicking inside the color swatch and selecting white from the window that opens.
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| Change the size in pixels to 10 for all sides and apply.
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| 6. Edit>Copy (or Ctrl+C) this image and return to the background image. Paste the image into the background as a new layer by Edit>Paste>Paste as New Layer (or Ctrl+L).
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| As you can see, the image is a little too large for the background. To fix that, we will resize the new layer only using the Raster Deform Tool.
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| Click on this tool (If you do not see it, you need to go View>Toolbars and select Tools). Make sure Deform is selected. Now at the top of the page, locate the ScaleX and ScaleY fields.
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| Experiment with these numbers (keeping them the same so that the image is not distorted). I have chosen 85% for the ratio. If you need to shrink your image, you may also need to sharpen once to improve the image. Do so by Adjust>Sharpness>Sharpen.
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| 7. Next we will rotate the layer. This will eventually give the appearance of the layers being photos laying on a surface. There are two methods for rotating layers. One method is under Image>Rotate>Free Rotate (or Control+R). In this tutorial, we will use a more "hands-on" method. If you still have the Raster Deform Tool selected, you will notice a line coming out from the center of the image. If you hover the mouse over the very end of that line the cursor will change to two alternating arrows. Hold your mouse button down and drag the line to the angle you would like the image rotated to. Rotate and move this layer until it is positioned where you would like it. You may also wish to sharpen the image again if needed.
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| 8. For the next image, we will basically repeat steps 5 through 8 with a few modifications. Open a second image and but borders on it the same as before. Copy and paste it as a new layer onto the background image. If needed, resize the image and rotate as desired.
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| I'm happy with the size of this image, but I want it to appear "behind" the large image that we pasted in first. In order to change this, we will move the layers. You need to have the Layers Pallette Visible. If you don't, go to View>Palettes>Layers (or hit F8).
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| Drag Layer 2 below Layer 1 to change the appearance of the images.
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| 9. Click and drag the layer to the desired position.
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| 10. Now that we have a feel for it, there is a lot of repetition to creating the final product. For each layer we will repeat steps 5 through 7, altering the size of the image and the rotation to create variety. Each image should be opened, have a frame added and pasted as a new layer in the same way as the first layer.
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| The final touches on the image are up to you. I've added some texture to the photos with scratch & dirt brushes. Finally, I want to add some text as a finishing touch. I will be adding the caption "The Moments We're Made Of". Click on the Text Tool
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| Click on the image in the general location for your text (you can change it later). Type in the text you desire, changing the color as needed in the materials palette and the font size and face in the toolbar.
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| A simple way to change the position and angle of text is to right click on the layer (in the layers palette) and convert it to a raster layer. After that, you can select the Raster Deform Tool and adjust the same as any other layer.
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The Finished Product!
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