This is the fifth post in a 5-part series. If you missed the other four, here’s your chance to get caught up:
If you’ve followed the series and experimented on your own, I’m sure you are now in love with PicMonkey! Yes, I can safely say that the monkey changed my life! It made my photography so much fun and changed the look of my blog – all for the better.
Many of the photos (in fact, most of them) from earlier in this series are collages. PicMonkey’s collage feature allows you to insert multiple photos onto pre-designed grids. As a craft or food blogger, why would you want to do this?
If you are posting step-by-step instructions, it’s not uncommon to have 10, 20, 30, 40 photos to teach a process. I don’t know about you, but uploading 40 photos to my blog and then writing step-by-step instructions along the way is a major task. And, if you are like me (and every other woman in the universe), time is at a premium!
Plus, as a blog reader, scrolling through a post with oodles of photos is a major commitment! Collages help by limiting the number of photos in your post. Even if you aren’t a blogger, making collages for other photo projects is just a fun way to share!
When you choose Collage from PicMonkey’s home page, it immediately opens a window to your computer’s hard drive so that you can choose photos to upload to PicMonkey. You can choose multiple photos to upload at the same time, but if you choose a bunch (like 15), it can make the monkey have a little hissy fit. Depending on the number of photos I am uploading to create my collage, I usually add in batches of five or six at a time.
In the photo collage above:
- You’ve uploaded your photos from your computer’s hard drive, Facebook, Dropbox or Flickr and they drop themselves into boxes to the left of your dashboard. PicMonkey’s default collage appears on your dashboard.
- To the left of your dashboard is the menu toolbar. There are only four functions you can do in Collage: open your photos (upload), choose a layout, choose swatches and change your background. Once you’ve decided on the number of photos you want to use in your collage, choose a layout from the menu bar. NOTE: the layouts titled “Pinter-etsy”, “Tile Border” and “Jigsaw” are premium layouts that are available with the upgrade to Royale. For this tutorial, I’ve selected “L-egant” and chosen the layout for eight photos.
- Once I’ve selected my layout, I drag my photos into the boxes by clicking the photo, holding it and dragging. Easy! Or, even easier, PicMonkey will AutoFill your collage if you click on the AutoFill button at the top of the dashboard. This cool feature takes, literally, a split second!
Don’t like where the monkey placed your photos? Clear All at the top of the dashboard will give you a clean slate.
And, once the photos are in place on the layout, users can click in each photo within the layout and move them ever so slightly to “center” them or move them left or right – in other words, no need to crop out Uncle Buster’s head on the far left of your photo because he photo-bombed an otherwise perfectly decent family photo! Just move your photo within the layout.
I have a confession to make: I’m not a craft blogger. In fact, if I had to choose a category, I would have to say that I’m a food blogger. But, I do have a few crafts on my site, so I decided to share a crafting exercise I attempted last year. In these photos, I was attempting to create a butterfly mobile I’d seen on Pinterest out of old sheet music (it was somewhat successful).
In the photo above, you can see the spacing bar is one of the few editing options that you can do in Collage. The other editing feature that users can do in Collage is drag the borders to change the dimensions of your collage. Users can also delete boxes from the collage, which makes the remaining boxes larger.
All other editing features can be done in Edit a Photo. Clicking on the Edit button will transfer your collage to the Edit a Photo section and there users can add text, overlays, resize, etc.
The Spacing tool allows you to create room between your collage photos. Another editing tool in Collage allows you to round the corners of the photos in your collage.
And, you can change the background color. Save your masterpiece and click “Edit” to make it even more masterful!
The Swatch tool allows you to choose PicMonkey’s swatches and add them to your collage. You can also upload your own swatches. Say you love the flowered swatch shown in the bottom left in the photo above and, you want to use that swatch to add text, overlays, whatever, in your collage. Add the swatch to one of the layout boxes, add the photos to the remaining boxes (if you use AutoFill, it will load the photos to all the empty boxes and you swatch will still be where you put it), then click on Edit at the top of the dashboard and finish glamorizing your collage.
You now have mastered the basics of PicMonkey’s four main menu options!
By: Carole, from Toot Sweet 4 Two
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