Design party: adding numbers + text to your collage in GIMP

So here's the second half of the design tutorial for creating and customizing a collage in GIMP*. Yesterday we made the actual collage and today we'll be adding numbers and text to it to add a little bit of organization and personality.

In the picture above I've added numbers to my collage. The circled numbers are actually a font that you can download called Fyra, and they're suuuper handy and useful. In this image I typed in the numbers then added a white circle behind each one to make them stand out a little better against the background. To learn how to add text, read on below!

1 // After you've created your collage you'll need to create a new layer. Then you'll select the rectangle tool and draw a shape on your collage (click, hold down your cursor and drag out til you've got your shape). Use the paint bucket fill tool to add color.

2// I always adjust opacity on my shapes when they're over a photo. That's a personal choice because I like how it looks, but I've seen stuff like this done on photos where the opacity was left at 100% and it looked great too! Just experiment to find what you like!

3// Click the "duplicate layer" icon to copy this shape into another layer. Drag to the next image on your collage and keep doing this until you've got boxes on all of your images.

4// Now it's time to add your text! For this collage my goal is to list some of my favorite past DIYs, so I'm going to give a title to each image so readers will know what each one is for. Just select your font tool, drag the box where you want it to be then type in what you want it to say (in the box that pops up).

5// Next we need to customize the font. Go to the Tool Options box and select which font you want to use, as well as the size and what color you want it to be.

6// Repeat steps 4+5 until you're done!

These are some different options of how you could customize it. Play around and experiment with your software and have fun with it!

*GIMP is a free photo editing program and can be used as an alternative to Photoshop. This design party series will cover tutorials in both programs, but I've opted to (re)start the series with a focus on GIMP. I feel the basic kind of information I wanted to start the tutorials off with will benefit those who may feel that designing graphics and images isn't necessarily their forté, and who may have thought they would never be able to learn the basics otherwise.

You can click here to read how to download the software for yourself.

I've got a lot of stuff planned for this series, but this stuff is for you guys. If you have an idea for a tutorial please leave it in a comment or email me directly. Check back next week to read about the basic functions in GIMP, and how you can use them to create the graphics you want!

Design party: making a collage in Photoshop

So today I'm showing you how to make the fun collages I do for my sponsor posts (click these words to see what I'm talking about). It's actually a pretty easy thing to do and helps save time when trying to get these posts together! This is the latest one I created for my sponsor love series:

Step 1//Create a new canvas in photoshop. The length doesn't matter so much, but make the width the same thing as you do for all other photos and images you post (mine are always 600px wide).

Step 2//Change the background color to something that your lines will stand out from.

Step 3//Create a new layer. Select the paintbrush tool and start drawing lines across your canvas. A trick to get a straight line: paint a little dot where you want your line to start then hold down the shift key and paint another dot where you want the line to end. It's like magic!

Step 4//Now it's time to crop down your image. Select the crop tool and crop out anything you don't need.

Step 5//Now we're ready to start adding in images. Open up the first image you want then copy and paste it into the collage document. Drag this new layer underneath the layer you used to make the lines. It's helpful to rename the layers as you create them (double click "Layer 1" then change it's name to "lines", "sponsor 1", etc).

Step 6//Scale the image down so that the main thing you want to be seen fits well into the shape you want it to be in. Now go to your "lines" layer and click the shape you're working in with the "magic wand" tool. In this case I wanted the little frog to be smack dab in the middle of the triangle shape.

Step 7//This next step is really important! You want to inverse your selection (Select>Inverse) then click back onto your "sponsor 1" layer. Hit the delete button. This should delete anything in your sponsor image that is outside of the shape we selected.

Step 8//Continue steps 5-7 until you have all your images into the collage. You'll note here that I've got some blue shapes left over.

Step 9//I felt like the leftover shapes weren't really that balanced, so I created more towards the bottom of the collage to even it out. To do this go back to your "lines" layer and draw in more using the same method we used earlier. You'll select these new shapes with the "magic wand" tool then go to the image we're deleting from and press "delete". Just make sure you aren't inversing the selection this time.

Step 10//Now it's time to fill in the blue spaces with different colors. Choose as many or as little as you want! I generally go with 2-3. You just select the area you want to change (make sure you're on the "lines" layer) then simply fill in with color using the paint bucket tool.

Step 11//Now it's time to add in numbers (or names, your pick). For the numbers I use a font that I downloaded called Fyra.

Step 12//To add contrast to your numbers, I "stroke" each one with a different color. Just double-click each text layer then click the last option in the menu ("stroke"). Play around with the size, opacity and color until you get something that you love. At this point the only thing left to do is save and upload your post!

It might sound like a lot of steps at first, but I promise this method actually saves a ton of time for me! Plus it's an interesting and different way to group the things you want to talk about. Let me know if you use this method of collaging for anything on your blog so I can check out your handy work : ) Feel free to comment or email me if you have any questions.