Another way to do this is:
1. Open up a new image in Photoshop (and I think this will work in PSP, too, since ISTR it has layers) that is roughly the dimensions of your final image; give it a background colour that you think is what you want to use.
2. Open up the images you want to use. Crop and size them appropriate to the final image if you have not done this yet. On each of them, select all, copy, then move to the first image and paste -- Photoshop should automatically make this a new layer, PSP may or may not (it's been ages since I worked with PSP). Repeat.
3. On each pasted layer, use the move tool to shift the images around so they are where you want them. You can also use the select all tool, invert, and cut to mimic cropping if you find you suddenly want to change them a bit, and you can use the 'transform' tools in Photoshop (I don't recall if there's a PSP equivalent) to resize -- hold down shift to keep your aspect ratio.
4. When everything is moved where you like it, and you've worked with the background layer to produce the effect you want there, flatten and save.
Note that you can work with bigger than your expected final product if you prefer, but do try to do your cropping first as it's easier to maintain identical sizes (assuming that's what you're after) that way -- crop the originals before the cut-and-paste. To get a reasonable canvas size for your base/background -- you can always resize later -- take the cropped images, multiply by number of images in both dimensions, and add a fudge for border; border being up to the compositor I can't give a good number here but you can always go with just "add 10%" and cut down.
This is a little simplistic but hopefully enough to get folks started. |
