Photomontage

After picture manipulation can photo montage been taught for children. It is basically working on layers as well but this time there are different pictures in on the layers. Each layer can be duplicated and changed of order again, and all the tools and actions learned before are to use again.

 

Photomontage, the final work

The photomontage is made of 5 different pictures (shown below) and multiple layers made of them.

 First of all I added all the layers into one picture. I opened all the pictures in GIMP and added each layer by dragging background layers (except the last one) over the picture I wanted to be as my background and added alfa channels on each of them. I scaled them into right size with scaling tool (left hand side toolbox, 3rd row, second tool from left in the picture below). I changed their color balances using curves tool (as presented in the article about photo enhancement) to fit all the colors together.

 Then I started all cutting work. I used lasso tool (point to point lasso) for selecting the area I wanted to remove (the screen shot above) and used erased for removing it (the screen shot below). I made other layers unvisible while working with one to make it easier to see what I've removed already.

Finally when I was comfortable with all layers and how they smoothly worked together, I started to work with the last picture to make it as a stamp. I changed it into black&white with desaturate action and curves tool (see the article about photo enhancing for both of these actions). Then I used magic wand (left hand side toolbox, 1st row, 4th tool from left) + delete to remove all the white areas.

In the layers box I changed the state of the layer as color. This state menu can be found above layers and opacity, and changed the opacity of the layer and erased some parts of it.

At last I merged down the picture and saved it as jpeg to be easily opened with any software.

Photo enhancement

After manipulation, the final work

Original picture before manipulation

Photo enhancement and picture manipulation are routine part of digital photographing today. I have used some basic tools to make this picture from India look better.

Before doing anything it is good to teach children some basic things which are similar on almost any software:

1. Open the program and the chosen picture (find the picture on your computer ->right-click ->open with... ->choose the right program)

2. Duplicating layers (on the right hand side there is a box called layers and there should be a layer called background ->right-click ->duplicate the layer) several times. Each action/effect is good to make on a different layer for easy playing with them - they can be marked as visible or unvisible (click the eye icon of the layer) and are easy to delete later. The order of the layers is easily changeable (left-click ->hold ->drag), the top one on the list is the top layer in the picture.

3. If using GIMP, make 'see-through' alfa channels (right-click the layer on the layer box ->add alfa channel) for all the layers, not needed when using Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro. Having alfa channel means that if you use eraser, it makes the layer see-through - if you don't have it, eraser leaves white marks and layers underneath are not seen.

4. Changing opacity of the layers is very usable action too. It is found in the layer box above the layers.

5. History box on the right hand side is for moving back and forth of your actions. In GIMP it is in the same area with layers, just choose the different tab (the one with yellow arrows)

6. To make the picture one flat photo again, use merge down action (right-click the top layer -> merge down).

When children know these actions, show them the toolbox on the left hand side. It is always good to tell them to have a play with different tools even before telling them anything about them. On the top menu there are different tools and actions for changing contrast, hue and saturation, filter gallery, blurring etc. I'd show them just the basic ones: contrast, curves, color balance and auto tools.

One of the most used tools is stamp tool/clone. It can be found in the left hand side toolbox as shown in the picture beneath.

I used stamp tool for removing the date and time. It is a bit confusing tool to use at first but once you get it, it can be used for many things. It simply works the way that you choose the place where from you want to clone (ctrl+alt+click) and start cloning (click the place you want to clone to).

After this step I cropped the picture (2nd row of the toolbox, the most right icon).

I changed contrast and the colors with curves tool (top menu ->tools ->colors/adjustment ->curves), the basic view of the tool changes contrast, and there is a menu for red/green/blue to change data of each color.

I made a desaturated layer (duplicate the 'curve' layer ->tools ->desaturate) and decreased opacity of the layer.

At last I edited background to look lighter with lighten/burn tool wchich can be found on the left hand side toolbox last row, the most right tool.