Is your spouse or sibling celebrating a special 40th or 50th birthday this year? Or are your parents celebrating a special anniversary? If you are searching for an traditional gift idea that's unique, memorable, and amusing, a photo collage is the perfect gift for that special person who already has everything.
For my husband's 40th birthday, I decided to originate a collage of pictures taken throughout our years together. I added some comical captions, laid it all out Adobe®Photoshop® and had it printed and matted at a institution frame shop. I displayed it at his party. While the guests had a chance to enjoy the picture, they took a moment to sign the mat. After the party, I had the photo institution framed, and it hangs in our bedroom. He was very surprised and he well loved it. Here is how I did it:
Halo Toys
Collect Your Photos
My husband ironically happens to be the photographer in the family. He has saved digital photographs on our computer since the year 2000. These are saved in folders by date. How fortunate for me! I was able to find some great shot of him wearing his many "hats".
There are many ways to save and exchange photos these days. You could email them to your source, save them to aSanDisk (memory stick) or save them to a Cd. I saved mine to a memory stick and saved them onto my desktop. I did search some photos that were of the aged 35mm variety, and I scanned these into files in my desktop Pc.
Develop a Theme
This is where the fun comes in. Hopefully you can well originate a theme from your photographs. For instance, there are many photographs taken over the years of my father sleeping! This could be the theme of the collage I could make for his 70th birthday! In my husband's case, he has many interests and hobbies (toys) and that's where my idea of his wearing his many hats became my theme.
Create Some Captions
Here's an additional one chance for you to show off your talent and get yourself published (so to speak). I created a word file of some captions that I added to my husband's photographs. I will share with you some of the better ones. He ran the Boston Marathon any times, and I have a photo of him running, the caption reads: "Runner: You ran many marathons and then you met me, I taught you the art of being sedentary." Here's another: "Mechanic: You fix many vehicles, you look so cute, With grease on your face in your tan monkey suit." Okay, to know him is to love him, but you get the idea. You may decide not to add any text, and to simply let the photo tell the story.
Design it in Adobe®Photoshop®
I designed my collage in Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is the commerce acceptable image editing program. Perhaps Photoshop is already included in your tool chest of graphics applications, if not, you can well purchase and learn the program. There are free Photoshop Tutorials all over the Internet. Refer to sketchpad.net for some perfect tutorials that will get you started.
One of Photoshop's most suited features is its use of layers. Each layer in a Photoshop document is a detach image, which can be edited apart from any other layer. My first layer is a photo of my husband's pride and joy, his 97' Gmc one ton dually diesel transporting his Kubota contract tractor. (It's all about the toys right?) I added a nice manly brown border around this photograph. This background layer fills the whole picture. I created a new layer and added the title "Grant's 40th". Next, I created a new layer and dropped in the first small photograph. I prolonged to add all the pictures, creating new layers each time. Because these are all detach layers, I could edit each photograph, without affecting my background, easily. Once I settled the pictures in the right locations, exposing enough of the background photograph, I started to add my captions. Each caption, also has it's own layer. For interest, I formatted some text in black and some text in white. For a few of the photos, I added a white halo corollary to the outer edges.
Once I was happy with my picture, I saved my file as a "tif" file, so all of the facts was saved, and the image was not compressed. I transferred this file onto my memory stick.
Print and Mat Your accomplished Product
I found a local frame shop called institution Frame Works. The frame shop has an Epson 9800 wide format printer, which prints up to 44" wide. I wanted a good size photo for our wall, and printing my 20" x 24" photo, from my tif file,was no problem. It cost me .00. I was very happy with the excellent, crisp potential of the photo. After consulting with the owner on the right mat and frame, my image was matted. I was ready for the party!
Display Your Matted Photo for your Guests to Sign
I displayed the matted photo on a large dining room table for all of the guests to sign. Make sure to have some good potential ink pens on hand for population to sign with. He now has some great nuggets of wisdom on ageing like: "Life begins at 40." And "40 is good." Well, if nothing else, as he ages, the signatures can help him recall who was at his party.
Frame It
I returned to institution Frame Works and had my signed photo collage framed. The cost of the mat and framing was about 0. The cost will vary based on your photo size, and your mat and frame selections.
With a miniature creativity, whatever with some basic Pc and Photoshop skills can originate a nice, traditional photo collage. Your special gift will be remembered for years to come!
How to Make a exquisite Gift Photo Collage Using Adobe Photoshop
Thanks To : Motorcycle Store
