K so I need to make a big image composed of smaller images. Final image will be printed on clear plastic and back lit. It will be approx 4'x2.5' Can anyone provide me with a bit of a guide to follow for importing images to photoshop, and stitching/placing/whatever it may be them together so that they are one image? I will need relatively rudimentary steps, if ya don't mind. I am posting this here so I know where to find it and can access it from school if I need to. So I'm looking to connect 40+ images, at a relatively high resolution, into about 4x2.5/3 feet. Thanks peeps, I know someone can get me started.
Feet I assume? So you're just putting a bunch of images together on a layout and making it look like a patterned quilt kind of? Kind of like this right? Edit: Without the background color right?
No you kretyn. He means something like this. This was the best example I could quickly find. Pardon the bush. Not really sure how to do it myself, I can ask one of my friends come tomorrow. I'll let you know.
both are accurate that GW is a copyrighted technique*, my short term memory cant remember what it is, but it's copyrighted... go figure those guys who made the bob marley poster are actually not so fun. *photomosaic... I didnt read too deeply into it, but apparently you cant step on that shit, just a sidebar. I need to figure out the sizes that pixels translate to (easy search and not set in stone I know) and also just how to connect them
I don't know the photoshop solution, but I can think of a couple of solutions involving programming. The GW example actually has a simple solution (I highly doubt it is a patented technique). Once you have the stitched any tiny pics together as the same size as your base, you apply the large picture as a filter so that the colors of the tiny pictures are modified just enough so they blend well from a far. If you look closely at the GW pic, you'll see that the faces are all discolored. If you have Matlab, you can treat both pictures as a RGB matrix and just add them together (will need to play with the constant multipler on the large picture): A + xB, where A and B are the two matrices and x is some constant. The other simple solution would be to write a routine where you overlay the large picture into the stitched tiny pics for the pixels that are just backgrounds for the portraits. This would only be easy if all of the tiny portraits are taken with same backgrounds (e.g. graduation pictures) so you'll only need one range. A third solution would be to apply a mean filter to each tiny picture and having a sorting routine find the appropriate position in the larger frame (i.e. match the tiny pic with a small group of pixels in the large picture). This would be the most (unnecessarily) complex method and would require a very large collection on tiny pics, but it would result in no alternating of any of the tiny pics. Matlab or some image/matrix language library (e.g. OpenCV in C) would be the easiest way to do any of these methods. For photoshop, I'm guessing the 1st method would be the only realistic way.
The Mosaic can be made with an application that is fairly old. You should be able to find it. They define images with specific qualities like Dark upper right corner, light lower left, Dark Upper right corner, gray lower left - then you find your own personal images and replace those ones. You then choose ANY image and it analyzes the photo and replaces the bitmap areas with your photos to form the mosaic image. But what you asked was to make a large image - I assume for printing. First you'll need to find out the exact pixel size and DPI resolution of the printer. All you need is a printer driver - choose the paper type and run a program that is out there called DevCaps. It retrieves the selected printer and paper type Device Capabilities and shows you the pixels wide, and high of the paper, the margins and enables you to make an image that will print without any scaling. Once you start scaling an image it will blur slightly. In photoshop you make a canvas of that resolution - match the DPI, width and height. You may need to modify your preferences for a large swap file or it will take forever. Setup the preferences for the app to use most of your systems memory. You could actually script it to build the larger image from a group of smaller images sizes. The only real advantage of that is that it will enable you to change the smaller group of images and rebuild the larger one with one button press. That will take some time. Look into ACTIONS and how to record and modify the script. Next you will need to learn to scale the images to specific sizes. Again Actions can help you remove repetetive tasks. I do alot of Sharpening, Image Adjustments and scaling - so I'll make a droplet which basically is an action that is spawned once you drop a group of images on it. it loads Photoshop - runs the action and generates a new file. This enables me to quickly modify the quality of images. I've also taken photos of people I know and put them into magazines. This is fairly difficult since you need to copy the magazine pattern and place it over the photo, match the lighting, and scale appropriately. But you would never know it was edited. Also fun to screw with people. Your request was just how to group images onto a larger page. You didn't say whether you wanted to edit them, balance them, sharpen or scale them. So this should get you started. There are quite a few features of Photoshop that are hidden and require your knowing exactly how to use them. For example blending text with a shadow, or making the text transparant - like you might do with a copyright. There are also alot of tutorials on YouTube that you might want to browse. I did write an action for one of Kodak's printers that printed labels. I used it to just organize one image into two sizes and very specific placement onto a page for dumping to the printer to make stickers. EVERYONE in our organization used it and it was fascinating to watch it move and organize your image into the proper layout for printing. Also I photographed and edited every image on my JustGoFly.com web site. I don't consider myself a Photoshop expert, but do use it fairly frequently. JustGoFly
