Making a photo collage.

I was introduced to photography when I was in 5th grade.  My teacher asked for volunteers to take pictures for my class yearbook, and I remember raising my hand as fast as I could.  Luckily I was chosen out of the many students who wanted to volunteer.  I remember holding a brand new Nikon 35mm film camera in my hands for the first time, and I truly felt special.  Many of the photos I took actually ended up in the yearbook, so I felt might proud for my accomplishment.

Today, my love of photography continues, and I have 3 film camera bodies and 6 digital camera bodies along with a wide array of lenses that are interchangeable with my camera bodies.  The majority of my equipment is by Nikon.  You might say that some of my greatest shots were Nikon moments rather than Kodak moments.

I've captured thousands of photos over the years thanks to my Nikon cameras.  Recently I wanted to create a photo collage of a small number of photos, so I began looking for software tools that could help me do that.  I first learned of a photo editing tool called GIMP.  GIMP is free and can be download quite easily.  GIMP has numerous features and capabilities that make it an excellent tool.  I tried making a simple collage using GIMP, and it really wasn't too complicated to put the collage together.  Nonetheless, it wasn't as convenient either.  It turned out to take a bit more effort than I expected because I had to insert each photo and resize it manually using appropriate pixel counts that gave me the size I wanted.  Of course, each photo had to be on a different layer.  Adding text to the photo was frustrating at times, but I finally completed a simple waterfall collage.  Above is an example of my waterfall collage using GIMP. 

Another software tool I came across for editing and organizing photos is Picasa.  Picasa is provide as a free download by Google.  I was amazed at how easy it was to organize and edit photos with Picasa.  As a test, I tried creating a similar photo collage with Picasa, and it easily allowed me to select the directories where I kept the photos I wanted to include in my collage.  I could basically include as many photos as I wanted with minimal effort.  Best of all, I was allowed to easily rotate each photo, overlap photos, and resize each photo to exactly the size I wanted simply by selecting the photo and dragging and rotating a selection point on the photo.  In a short period of time I put together this scenery collage using Picasa.  The point is not that it's a busy collage with so many photos.  My point is that I put it together in less time than using GIMP, and I was able to resize each image exactly like I wanted.

I currently use both GIMP and Picasa because I believe both tools are incredibly powerful, and the price is absolutely just right.  If you're looking for a photo editing tool you can download for free, why not try both tools?  You have nothing to lose.  At the very least it will give you the opportunity to look through some old photos to create you very own collage.