I don't think I have any software that'll do this. Yes, please show me some freeware. Thanks!
After a quick big G search I found this: photoscape
Later tonight I will install it and try out the combine feature that they talk about on the publishers website. It looks like it will do the job quite nicely. Once I have tried it out I will post a mini tutorial for you and everyone else on the steps to take.
In it I said that yes they are all fine. Saturation and vibrancy was covered in the original stipulations.
I have updated the original post with hue as well, just in case no one reads this far.
Great. I was aware about saturation and vibrancy, but since hue wasn't specifically mentioned I wasn't about to touch that slider . I was assuming they were all in the same 'basic' editing bag. Thanks for the precision.
In it I said that yes they are all fine. Saturation and vibrancy was covered in the original stipulations.
I have updated the original post with hue as well, just in case no one reads this far.
As only basic editing is permitted, would masking out irrelevent areas of the individual-letter-pictures constitute basic or advanced editing? ( I would be using Layer Mask in PSE8 )
I'll give an example of what I am talking about, say I wanted an "I" for my word, so I take a picture of, say, a telegraph pole. Would it be within the "basic editing" for this challenge to mask out everything apart from the telegraph pole in the original picture, and then use that along with other similarly treated "Letters" along with a suitable background. There would be no filters applied to the individual frames and only the standard hue/sat/sharpening that has already been stated as being ok.
As only basic editing is permitted, would masking out irrelevent areas of the individual-letter-pictures constitute basic or advanced editing? ( I would be using Layer Mask in PSE8 )
Tim
I consider masking beyond basic editing. So... The answer is sorry, nope. :nah
After a quick big G search I found this: photoscape
kdotaylor - has asked how to put each of the individual letter photos into a final image. This morning I did a quick search and found a freeware windows application called photoscape that looked promising. I must say I am absolutely thrilled with this program and how easy it is to do exactly what we need it to do for this challenge.
I spent about 15 minutes searching around my house looking for the letters P H O T O S, in another 5 minutes I created this with photoscape.
Once you install the program and run it you are presented with a round menu system. Choose Combine
You are then presented with a window that has your folder tree on the top left. The images inside the selected folder on the bottom left. A top section that allows you to drag and drop the order of your photos after they have been added. A central area canvas that shows your finished image. Finally you have a right panel that has all the options.
You can add photos by using the ADD button at the top right or you can drag photos from the bottom left side onto your canvas area. In this example we have 6 letters so I chose 6 columns as you can see in the bottom right. If I wanted a square image I could choose 3 columns and it would stack the last three below the first, this is in checker mode. There are also two other tabs, one called "Down" and "Side" - Side mode will also work in this case.
A border is super easy to create, my example uses an 8 pixel black border and you can even give a rounded edge to your borders if you like. There seems to be some other border options as well but I have not experimented with them.
Two important settings are also the "Resize Ratio" in the first section of options. I set mine to 26% to make the images fit approx 1024 wide which made them about 200 tall. The other thing is to set your "Preview Zoom", located on the bottom center of the window, I set mine to 50% so I could see the whole image at once.
I took me much longer to type this out than it did to create the Alphabet Soup example. This software rocks in doing the exact thing we need it to do.
If anyone has concerns or more questions about what I have covered here, do not be afraid to ask.
P.S. If you have a Mac OSX machine I'm sorry. I imagine there are other free solutions for OSX as well but I have not looked.
Wow, Sean!! You are one awesome judge/moderator/challenge boss (or whatever your 'title' is)!!! I am so impressed that you took the time not only to search for free software to use, but also to create something you could use to put together 'how-to' instructions. Thank you so much for taking time to do this. clapclap
I have software and I have merged photos together before, but this program looks so simple to use. I may have to try it, just for grins. .
Sherry
ps: Love your 'p-h-o-t-o-s' montage, btw! Excellent!
I am very happy to have found something that made the process so easy. I'm even happier that so far at least three people have benefited from it
I forgot to mention two possibly important things in my mini tut:
1. My photos were pre cropped but, cropping images inside of photoscape is actually very easy to do as well. If you look back at my example, At the top of the screen is an EDIT tab. Under that tab is a plethora of options that allow you to do many things to your photo including filters that go beyond the Basic editing allowed for this challenge.. To crop find the crop tab, there is a drop down box that houses tons of different aspect ratios to choose from. In my example you would choose 5x7 and then click, drag and draw a crop box right on your photo. The crop is constrained to your aspect ratio choice. Once you are happy with your crop you can then save it as a new image. Then you go back to combine mode.
2. The Exif information in your photos seems to be kept intact when using photoscape. After creating my example I checked and the Exif information from the 'P' was embedded in the final image.
No picture example this time because I'm not at my main computer this morning. If anyone has trouble using the editing options in photoscape just ask me here for more help.
There is absolutely no excuse now not to go find letters in your environment and participate in this round. Go have some creative fun!
Sorry to be a bit of a pest, but I have another question, does our entry have to be Only consisting of the word, or can we have the word on a background image? ( ie, images of the individual letter with or without frames, arranged into the word and then placed on a background image which is also taken within the required time frame of course )
Great idea for a challenge, but I tell ya, it's just gonna be impossible to judge this one, because every single entry at the very least is going to be quite creative.
My approach in judging this one will be, I will totally ignore looking at the username/title of each entry and first try to see if I can decipher the words just by looking at the pictures themselves and then go from there.
Sorry to be a bit of a pest, but I have another question, does our entry have to be Only consisting of the word, or can we have the word on a background image? ( ie, images of the individual letter with or without frames, arranged into the word and then placed on a background image which is also taken within the required time frame of course )
Thanks in advance for your direction on this Sean
Tim
Tim, you really are stuck on pushing the threshold and I commend you for that but... What you are proposing sounds like you are going to be using layers which unfortunately is not really "Basic editing". The stipulations tried to steer you into being creative with how you find the letters and what you do with the idea. Basic editing gives you more than enough tools to complete the task. Now I did allow frames so technically if your frame was made out of another image I can not really fault you for that.
Great idea for a challenge, but I tell ya, it's just gonna be impossible to judge this one, because every single entry at the very least is going to be quite creative.
I have every confidence that you will be able to sift through and find your 10 favorites. I agree it will be different than most rounds to judge but even though an entry will be several images, you can still look at the entry as a whole and make a decision based on what you personally consider important.
I have to tell ya, Sean, that this challenge topic really has me getting my camera out again! I haven't been this excited about taking photos in quite a while. (I hit a slump and was totally disgusted with everything I did. I'm still not totally happy with the quality of my shots, but at least I'm trying again.)
I think I've been driving my family nuts the last few days looking for letters all over the place. I've now found all my letters--I'm just trying to get decent pictures of them that I'm happy with so I can put it all together.
I also really like that little software pkg you found. What a nice little find!
Some of my photos are on this thread
thanks for the help!
Ok looks like your using photobucket to host your photos. I did a few searches for information on photobucket and EXIF and almost nothing came up. The images you posted in the linked threads do not have any EXIF info in them at all. I'm not really sure if photobucket supports EXIF.
What may need to happen is I can set up another gallery that is for EXIF linking only. That way you will be able to upload each letter to the gallery and then link to it using the instructions I gave as a link in the original post. Unless anyone else knows how to get EXIF info to work with photobucket.
I will have to think on this one a bit.
Jenn as an experiment please try uploading something to the gallery and see if the EXIF info shows up for you.
then let me know here so I can check and delete the test for you.
Comments
No restrictions on borders, go crazy if you like. In regards to hue and B&W, those are all fine.
After a quick big G search I found this: photoscape
Later tonight I will install it and try out the combine feature that they talk about on the publishers website. It looks like it will do the job quite nicely. Once I have tried it out I will post a mini tutorial for you and everyone else on the steps to take.
Kelly
My Photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freezethemomentphotography/
http://www.kfsphotography.smugmug.com
Please re-read my previous post
In it I said that yes they are all fine. Saturation and vibrancy was covered in the original stipulations.
I have updated the original post with hue as well, just in case no one reads this far.
Kelly
My Photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/freezethemomentphotography/
http://www.kfsphotography.smugmug.com
As only basic editing is permitted, would masking out irrelevent areas of the individual-letter-pictures constitute basic or advanced editing? ( I would be using Layer Mask in PSE8 )
I'll give an example of what I am talking about, say I wanted an "I" for my word, so I take a picture of, say, a telegraph pole. Would it be within the "basic editing" for this challenge to mask out everything apart from the telegraph pole in the original picture, and then use that along with other similarly treated "Letters" along with a suitable background. There would be no filters applied to the individual frames and only the standard hue/sat/sharpening that has already been stated as being ok.
I hope that example explains what I am asking.
Tim
I consider masking beyond basic editing. So... The answer is sorry, nope. :nah
Ok, no probs. Thanks for clearing it up.
Tim
kdotaylor - has asked how to put each of the individual letter photos into a final image. This morning I did a quick search and found a freeware windows application called photoscape that looked promising. I must say I am absolutely thrilled with this program and how easy it is to do exactly what we need it to do for this challenge.
I spent about 15 minutes searching around my house looking for the letters P H O T O S, in another 5 minutes I created this with photoscape.
Once you install the program and run it you are presented with a round menu system. Choose Combine
You are then presented with a window that has your folder tree on the top left. The images inside the selected folder on the bottom left. A top section that allows you to drag and drop the order of your photos after they have been added. A central area canvas that shows your finished image. Finally you have a right panel that has all the options.
You can add photos by using the ADD button at the top right or you can drag photos from the bottom left side onto your canvas area. In this example we have 6 letters so I chose 6 columns as you can see in the bottom right. If I wanted a square image I could choose 3 columns and it would stack the last three below the first, this is in checker mode. There are also two other tabs, one called "Down" and "Side" - Side mode will also work in this case.
A border is super easy to create, my example uses an 8 pixel black border and you can even give a rounded edge to your borders if you like. There seems to be some other border options as well but I have not experimented with them.
Two important settings are also the "Resize Ratio" in the first section of options. I set mine to 26% to make the images fit approx 1024 wide which made them about 200 tall. The other thing is to set your "Preview Zoom", located on the bottom center of the window, I set mine to 50% so I could see the whole image at once.
I took me much longer to type this out than it did to create the Alphabet Soup example. This software rocks in doing the exact thing we need it to do.
If anyone has concerns or more questions about what I have covered here, do not be afraid to ask.
P.S. If you have a Mac OSX machine I'm sorry. I imagine there are other free solutions for OSX as well but I have not looked.
I have software and I have merged photos together before, but this program looks so simple to use. I may have to try it, just for grins.
Sherry
ps: Love your 'p-h-o-t-o-s' montage, btw! Excellent!
"In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun..." Mary Poppins
www.katetaylor.smugmug.com
"You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." Mark Twain
I forgot to mention two possibly important things in my mini tut:
1. My photos were pre cropped but, cropping images inside of photoscape is actually very easy to do as well. If you look back at my example, At the top of the screen is an EDIT tab. Under that tab is a plethora of options that allow you to do many things to your photo including filters that go beyond the Basic editing allowed for this challenge.. To crop find the crop tab, there is a drop down box that houses tons of different aspect ratios to choose from. In my example you would choose 5x7 and then click, drag and draw a crop box right on your photo. The crop is constrained to your aspect ratio choice. Once you are happy with your crop you can then save it as a new image. Then you go back to combine mode.
2. The Exif information in your photos seems to be kept intact when using photoscape. After creating my example I checked and the Exif information from the 'P' was embedded in the final image.
No picture example this time because I'm not at my main computer this morning. If anyone has trouble using the editing options in photoscape just ask me here for more help.
There is absolutely no excuse now not to go find letters in your environment and participate in this round. Go have some creative fun!
I'm kinda glad you're not in this round
pyroPrints.com/5819572 The Photo Section
I'm not kinda glad.. I am VERY glad that you ARE in this round
Oh I am. And I got IDEAS.
I already got my word/layout ready, just have to go out and shoot.
pyroPrints.com/5819572 The Photo Section
AWESOME!
Thanks in advance for your direction on this Sean
Tim
How do I find the url to link to the EXIF? Maybe I'm not doing this right.
thanks....
Panasonic Lumix 10x DMC-TZ3 :photo
Leica Mega O.I.S./28mm WIDE :smile6
My approach in judging this one will be, I will totally ignore looking at the username/title of each entry and first try to see if I can decipher the words just by looking at the pictures themselves and then go from there.
Looking forward to seeing the final gallery.
Los Angeles dance photographer
Website: http://www.allenparseghian.com
http://danielplumer.com/
Facebook Fan Page
Jenn where are your photos located? if they are on a SmugMug account its easy if they are elsewhere let me know and I will see if I can help.
Tim, you really are stuck on pushing the threshold and I commend you for that but... What you are proposing sounds like you are going to be using layers which unfortunately is not really "Basic editing". The stipulations tried to steer you into being creative with how you find the letters and what you do with the idea. Basic editing gives you more than enough tools to complete the task. Now I did allow frames so technically if your frame was made out of another image I can not really fault you for that.
I have every confidence that you will be able to sift through and find your 10 favorites. I agree it will be different than most rounds to judge but even though an entry will be several images, you can still look at the entry as a whole and make a decision based on what you personally consider important.
I think I've been driving my family nuts the last few days looking for letters all over the place. I've now found all my letters--I'm just trying to get decent pictures of them that I'm happy with so I can put it all together.
I also really like that little software pkg you found. What a nice little find!
Sherry
I must say that I am having a ton of fun thinking the themes up and watching all the cool things everyone comes up with.
Some of my photos are on this thread:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=169100
Some are here too:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=169068
thanks for the help!
Panasonic Lumix 10x DMC-TZ3 :photo
Leica Mega O.I.S./28mm WIDE :smile6
Ok looks like your using photobucket to host your photos. I did a few searches for information on photobucket and EXIF and almost nothing came up. The images you posted in the linked threads do not have any EXIF info in them at all. I'm not really sure if photobucket supports EXIF.
What may need to happen is I can set up another gallery that is for EXIF linking only. That way you will be able to upload each letter to the gallery and then link to it using the instructions I gave as a link in the original post. Unless anyone else knows how to get EXIF info to work with photobucket.
I will have to think on this one a bit.
Jenn as an experiment please try uploading something to the gallery and see if the EXIF info shows up for you.
then let me know here so I can check and delete the test for you.
Thanks.