Creating a collage from a single image

[aragona]

Hi,

I just painted my living room and have a very long wall with nothing on it. Since I have a ton of photographs, I want to print and frame something out but I don't just want a photograph on the wall, I want something creative and different. I got the idea that I could break a single image up into even pieces and frame each piece by itself, recreating the whole image out of pieces.

I looked around for some techniques to do this. What I found pointed to the ruler tool but no matter how hard I try, they pieces don't come out even. Does anyone know how to break up an image into even pieces?

Example

p1 p2 p3 p4

Here are some images I am considering using but I'm not really sure yet. What kinds of images would look best for this type of display? Flowers? Animals?


The one bonus to being a photographer is that if none of these turn out to be suitable, I can always take more.

[OsmosisStudios]

Your second and fourth images would work best.

What you have to do is open the image in an editor of some sort, and use a guide system or grid to divide the image into 4 sections. Once you've done that just crop to the first section, save as a new file. THen crop to the second section, save as a new file. and so on.

You'll end up with 4 separate images which you can have printed individually and then frame individually to create the collage.

[aragona]

I'm using Photoshop CS 3 Extended and haven't found a guide or grid section. Do you know where it is?

(I like those two images best, also.)

[OsmosisStudios]

View > New Guide (you can place it by pixel or by actual measurement). Guides can also be placed by clicking and dragging from the rulers (which can be summoned by CTRL+R or CMD+R).

[aragona]

Awesome, thanks so much. Second question regarding printing images. I usually go to KodakGallery but can order prints only in the most standard sizes. Something tells me I'm going to need to do something differently. I'm thinking maybe a 12x36 poster size if I cut the image into fourths. I do know a place in town that makes that size on poster paper. I did a work project.

How do I format my image slices to print into this size?

[OsmosisStudios]

Well a 12x36 would actually be best cut into 3 12x12 photos. Otherwise do a 32x12, which is 4 8x12" prints. I'd actually suggest doing just that: crop your image to 4 sections, each 8x12 in size. Then place them on the wall in separate 8x12 frames.