Design party: making a collage in GIMP

Howdy! Man, I've been busy busy at work with this tutorial! And as a matter of fact, while in the middle of it I realized I should probably go even further into the basics of GIMP for anyone out there who is brand spanking new to it. So today I'll keep with my original plan of showing you how to do a basic square collage, then tomorrow we'll go over different ways to add wording+numbers to bring some organization to it, and next week I'll start my three part series about the basic functions we'll use over and over again in these tutorials.

Okay, for those of your who are unfamiliar with it, GIMP is a free photo editing program that can be downloaded in the Mac App Store or you can download it here for non-Mac users. I used this software for about 6 months before getting a copy of Photoshop. To me it can be a little awkward to navigate around at first, and it's much less user-friendly than Photoshop, but it definitely gets the job done! Plus I'm here to help you create beautifully basic images and graphics for your blog or shop.

Collages are a really useful thing to have on your blog. You can use them for absolutely anything! I often use them for my color party posts, sponsor highlights and DIY inspiration posts. In this tutorial I'm using a collage to highlight some of my favorite DIYs from the past (links for each DIY can be found at the bottom of this post). We'll talk about adding the numbers tomorrow!

So download the software then come back and join the party! I recommend reading through the whole tutorial first then opening up GIMP and playing with your collage. I promise it'll help! Here goes.

1// Once GIMP opens click File>New to create a new image*.

2// Set your dimensions for the file. My blog images are 600px wide so that's what I always set for my width**. Most blogs use widths between 500-550px, so do whatever you're comfortable with! The height for your collage is totally up to you. In this case and for simplicity's sake, my image will be a square, so width and height are the same.

3// Immediately after creating any new file I save it. There's a million different file types you can save an image as, most of which I know nothing about. The main file formats I use are .jpeg, .png, .gif and .psd (for Photoshop), but in this case we'll use the GIMP extension (.xcf). The main thing you need to know right now is that .jpeg and .png files flatten any layers in your collage (you'll see what I'm talking about as we go on) and .psd and .xcf save the file while keeping the layers intact. So name your file whatever you'd like, in whatever folder you want to keep it in, click the dropdown menu towards the bottom of the box and click GIMP XCF image. Hit save. I hit the "save" button about a million times while working on a graphic. You never know when the software or your computer will crash, when you'll accidentally exit out of the program, or who knows what. I've lost way too much work in my early days to not do this and I'm really hoping you can learn from my negligence!

4// Okay! So we've created a blank file for our collage, renamed it and saved it in .xcf format. Now we need to open up our images that will be going into the collage***.

5// Now lets crop this down to the size we'll need for the collage. Click the crop tool from the Toolbox. In the Tool Options window click "fixed", select "aspect ratio" from the dropdown menu and type in 1:1 for the ratio. This will lock in a square format.

6// Click on your image and drag the box out until it's the size you want. Position it how you want it then hit enter.

7// BAM. You're amazing.

8// Now we need to scale the image to make sure it fits the dimensions for it's corner of the collage. Click Image>Scale Image.

9// It's going to be taking up half of the width and half of the height of my collage, so I'm going to change the original dimensions to 300 for both width and height. Make sure pixels is selected in your dropdown menu. Hit "scale".

10// Now we're going to copy this image and paste it into our collage. Go to Select>All.

11// Go to Edit>Copy.

12// Go back to your collage and click Edit>Paste.

13// Image will paste onto the collage (**see step 15 for some side note information). Hold your cursor over the image and drag it to where you want it in your collage.

14// Repeat steps 4-13 until you have all the images pasted into your collage.

15// As I said at the beginning of this tutorial, GIMP is kind of awkward to navigate and isn't the most user-friendly. One of my main annoyances with this program is that you have to double click each new layer when you paste it in and rename the file for it to show up. You can see what I'm talking about in the image above. The bottom left corner is supposed to have an image but it's just a blank square with a dashed rectangle around it. Awkwaaard.

16// To fix this just double click the layer and rename it something awesome (like "ombre braid"). After you rename the layer it shows up on the collage. You're so smart.

17// So now we've got all of our images into our collage and I'm so freaking proud of you. Like, mama bird proud of you (that's an inside joke between and my best friend but I'm hoping you still get the sentiment). It's like you just freaking flew from the nest for the first time. GO. YOU. Take a victory lap around the park and then come back to mama...cause now we need to add in some finishing touches. Select the little page icon at the bottom of your Layers window so we can add a new layer to the file.

18// We're going to create dividers for the images. To do that hit your rectangle tool in the Toolbox, then click one edge of your image and drag your cursor to the other side. While still holding down the cursor you can play with the height of the rectangle, but I wouldn't make it too thick, unless you're going for that kinda thing.

19// After you've created your rectangle space, click the paint bucket tool, then double click the top box that's a couple rows underneath the paint tool (these are your swatches). A box opens up so that we can select the color we want. I like white dividers and obviously that's what I recommend you use too. Just looks nice and clean. Hit the bottom right corner then click "ok". We're getting soooo close to the end here. I promise!

20// Put your cursor inside of the rectangle shape you just created, then click. It should fill in the space with white (if you messed up and filled in the wrong space, just hit Edit>Undo Move and try again).

21// Duplicate that layer by hitting the button highlighted above.

22// That just made another layer with the same line. Now we're gonna hit Layer>Transform>Rotate 90° clockwise.

23// And BAM. Collage is officially made, complete with dividers. Make sure you save again (as well as a BAZILLION TIMES all throughout this process). Actually, save it twice when you're done..once as the .xcf file and the next time as a .png/.jpeg file (that way you can come back and edit the layers if you need to).

Hopefully this wasn't too hard to bear, and even moreso, I hope you're excited about what all I know you can do! Leave a comment below or email me directly if you have any questions or need clarification on something. Also, please check out the notes below as they have a lot to do with the images you create once they're ready to be posted on your blog!

*The arrow seen on these images was created by Jess at I Rock So What. You can see+download it here for yourself, as well as check out all of the other fun free stuff she creates. All graphics and printables are free for personal use only.

**If you like looking awesome (<--peer pressure, I know) it's really important to create images that remain a consistent width. I hear that all the time from many a blogger, but still see crazy-sized images on blogs everywhere. So it's worth saying again and again in my opinion! It creates a cohesion to your blog layout and shows thoughtfulness and attention to detail.

***Please please PLEASE link back to the original source if you use images that you haven't created. If you find an image from someone who also didn't create it but they've linked the original source, link the original source and, if you wanna be nice, you can credit them too. I find a lot of images on Pinterest from people who curate amazing collections of pretty things, and I like to lead others to their collections. You can click here to see what I'm talking about

DIYs featured in collage:
personalize your moleskin notebooks | ombre at home | easy maxi skirt DIY | agate necklace DIY