Winter Getaway Photo Collage

Winter Getaway Photo Collage

Do more with those photos from your amazing vacation. Surprise your friends and family with an exciting photo collage of your favorite shots.

Layers, the Blur Filter and the Transform tools are used in this tutorial.

Step 1

Open a background image on which you will place the rest of the images.

Step 2

Add your favorite photos to the composition. To add photos from the iPhoto Library, choose View > Show Photo Browser. Choose a photo album. Then, simply click and drag photos from the Photo Browser to the canvas of any image (you can also drag photos from the Finder to the canvas).

Use the Transform Tool (Edit > Transform) to adjust the size and angle of each image, and with the Move Tool place it into the right position.

Add and arrange more images. Each image you add creates a new layer in the Layers palette. In the Layers palette, click and drag a layer to move it above or below other layers, or use the Move Tool to move images around directly on the canvas.

Step 3

Add border lines to the images. With the image layer selected, choose Edit > Stroke. In the Stroke dialog, choose the color white, set Width to roughly 7 px and select the Inside radio button to keep the border line inside the image.

Repeat the same steps on all of the image layers.

Step 4

Add a realistic look to the collage by adding a drop shadow effect to each image:

  1. Duplicate the layer of the image. With the layer selected, choose Edit > Duplicate Layer.
  2. Fill the original image layer by choosing Edit > Fill; then, in the Fill palette, set the Color to black. Then check the Preserve Transparency checkbox to fill the image only and not the entire layer. Click OK.
  3. Move the layer a little to left and down. Tip: Use the arrow keys to move a layer by a single pixel.
  4. To smooth the shadow, Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Drag the radius slider to approximately 10 px.
  5. To reduce clutter in the Layers palette, merge the shadow and image layers for each photo. Command-click on each of the two layers to select them both and choose Layer > Merge Layers.

Repeat the same steps until all images have their shadow effect.

Step 5

Make colors even crisper and more vibrant in your collage. To do that, use the Curves Tool. With the image layer selected, choose Image > Curves and play with the curve angle.

Adjust the colors of all images, and the photo collage is complete!

Resources

Tutorial Comments

  1. John H - February 17th, 2012 at 2:20 pm

    I’ve just spent a while trying to do this one. Each time I try to OK the transformation, the computer hangs for a while, and then the effect goes.
    This is on the first photo!
    Is there a bug, or am I missing something?
    thanks.

    By the way, new to the app, just got it yesterday, and loved the B&W tutorial!

  2. Ausra - February 17th, 2012 at 3:37 pm

    Hi John,

    The images might be too large, did you try using smaller images? Can you send us the image to support@pixelmator.com?

  3. dog - March 19th, 2012 at 6:02 pm

    Outstanding quest there. What occurred after? Thanks!

  4. Jeff Skinner - March 21st, 2012 at 10:03 pm

    I just started using Pixelmator. I really like it but I was having some trouble with step 3 when I am adding boarder lines to the images. When I select the Inside radio button to keep the border line inside the image my whole image goes white? Appreciate any help!!

    Cheers,
    Jeff

  5. Ausra - March 23rd, 2012 at 8:16 am

    Hi Jeff,

    I suspect it happens due to your graphics card. We posted about the issues related to certain graphics cards here:

    http://support.pixelmator.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7694

    If that is not the case, can you please email us to bugs@pixelmator.com ?

  6. Viv - March 29th, 2012 at 4:14 pm

    Hi … I want to transform about 50 images…is there a way to do it on a bulk basis rather than drag them and transform them one at a time ?

    Thanks a lot

  7. darius - March 30th, 2012 at 11:46 am

    @Viv
    To resize multiple images to the same size you can use Automator Fit Images action script, but to make a collage you need to reposition each photo, so in the end you’d still have to drag and drop images one at a time

  8. Christa Leduc - March 31st, 2012 at 6:47 pm

    I have a problem with layers. I want to make a photo collage. When I add photos, the first one is perfect in size, but the subsequent photo layers are huge and are very difficult to transform to the proper size. When I go to image size it shows the canvas size and it doesn’t let me change the image size.

  9. darius - April 1st, 2012 at 1:27 pm

    @Christa Leduc
    you could try to resize your photos to similar dimensions before importing it into the collage document.
    Main Menu > Image > Image Size…

  10. el-nico - May 16th, 2012 at 8:08 am

    Yes and thank You!
    Have been using Pixelmator for almost two years now, and did not know that I can make collages until today … (yeah) …. and by following this tutorial I now have five kick-ass collages I will make into postcards.
    Fun time doin’ it, no time spend!
    Love it!

Leave a Reply


© Pixelmator Team Ltd.