The Ohanaware Weblog

A great gift idea for family, especially parents, grand parents or even friends; is a photo collage showing the highlights of the year or simply some of the best moments you’ve shared together. Creating the photo collage is easy and I’ll show you how to do it with Funtastic Photos (If you don’t have it, get your free trial here), you may be able to use other products to achieve this layout.

The hard part is getting the photo printed and framed, personally I dropped a copy of my photo onto a little USB memory stick (one small enough to fit on my car keys), I then went into town and found a store that’ll do this for me. Simply choose the frame, then the kind of paper and wait a couple of minutes, easy and beautiful. You may not be so lucky, so I’ve done some searching online and I’ve found that Kodak offer an online service, which’ll mail you or your giftee (I just made that up!) a high quality framed print. They say if you order by the 12th of December you should receive it in time for Christmas. There may be other online companies that’ll do this, I choose Kodak because the information was easy to find on their site and they’re a well known brand.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/category.jsp?parentCatId=Products&catId=C430005

Step 1 :: Create the collage
Select the photos you want to use in the browser and then click on the “Print & Layouts” toolbar button to load these images into the “Print & Layouts” interface. If you want to add more images to your layout, simply click the little “+” button at the bottom left hand corner of the window. This’ll take you back to the Browser interface, once you’ve chosen the images, click on the “Print & Layouts” toolbar button to add the images to the layout. While you’re in the “Print & Layouts” interface you can choose the layout from the icons at the bottom of the window. For the moment I’m using the “7 Images” layout. I used the “Page Setup” toolbar button to specify a Landscape layout.

Step 2 :: Export your layout
You can change the location of the images by dragging them from one box to another. Once you’re happy, we’ll save this as a high resolution image. Click on the “Export…” toolbar button and select “Export…” from the menu, this’ll bring up the “Export…” window. From the “Format” menu, select “JPEG” and make sure the quality is set as far right as the slider will go. Next choose “14 Megapixels” from the “Fit Into” menu. When you’re ready click the “Save” button and choose a memorable location, you may also want to give the file an easy to spot name, say like “xmas collage”. Here’s what mine looks like (albeit smaller) below.

Step 3 :: Now Print
If you’re lucky enough to have a store near you that’ll print and frame your collage for you, you can use a USB memory stick or transfer the image on to your digital camera. Then take your camera or USB memory stick and ask them to print and frame your image. You should get to choose your frame and the kind of paper to print the photo onto. I personally prefer this option as I can see, touch and feel the frame and get a good idea of how it’s going to look before I hand over my cash. However not everyone has this luxury, so I choose the Kodak online service from Kodak.

Use your favorite browser and click on the following link http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/category.jsp?parentCatId=Products&catId=C430005, then choose the kind of frame you liked, then choose the variation. They have a nice wide range of frames to choose from, a simple one click chooses the option. Then you’ll get a screen that’ll let you choose which picture to use. Click the “Add Photo” button and it asked you to login. If you’ve never used this service, you’ll need to sign up, which is as simple as entering your name, e-mail address and choosing a password. You’ll then presented a dialog titled “Upload Photos”, click on the “Browse” button and then select your “xmas collage.jpg” image. Once it’s uploaded the image, close the dialog and you’ll see a new album containing your image. Click on your image. Now you should see something like the below.

Now simply click on the “Add to Cart” button, enter in the shipping details, click on the Check Out button and you’ll be asked to re-enter your password. Then you’ll need to enter in Credit Card details and click on “Next”. You should be asked to verify everything and confirm it. Once completed sit back and relax as that’s another gift taken care of.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 12:14 pm and is filed under All Articles, All Tutorials, Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.