Making a collage for a birthday
By eVoLi89
@eVoLi89 (161)
Belgium
January 8, 2009 3:00pm CST
I want to make a collage for the birthday of a good friend of mine in choir, she'll turn 20. I have a basic knowledge of Photoshop, but I want to make this one really special, as it's a gift. So have you got any hints, made a cool collage yourself, or know a nice technique I might use?
So, some more information: it's a girl from university choir, we joined together, I know her for a year and a half now. I've got a lot of pictures, that's no problem, from different occasions (with choir usually: choir trip this summer, when we're in a bar after concert/rehearsals, parties,...). As she's fond of music (of course), I was thinking to put a music score in the background, and a big 20 in colour in the middle of it (it'll be 20x20 cm), and make the rest of the pics black and white, that's classy and you avoid non-matching colours on different pics and stuff.
So what do you guys think? How can I make a great collage for her?
2 responses
@Davidarich (985)
• Australia
9 Jan 09
What a great idea! But although PS can do the work, and very well, too, it is time consuming and requires a lot of unnecessary work.
A better option is a Desk Top Publishing (DTP) program with templates to create collages (Serif make an excellent one called PagePlus; the current version is X3 , but they give V6 away free as a sales incentive).
Even better would be to download a Collage and/or Scrap booking program (search for Free Collage Software). There are plenty of free ones online, and heaps of really top shareware versions for about $20. They will do all that you want in a fraction of the time you would spend working with PS, and give a more polished result besides.
Also online you can find "Year You Were Born" and related programs which supply newspaper and other artifacts from people's birth year ~ very nostalgic and might complement your collage nicely.
@tinkerick (1257)
• United States
8 Jan 09
I've done a few in my day. Most recently my co-worker and I did one for our boss' birthday a couple years ago and everyone thought it was pretty neat.
We did it the traditional way - physically cutting and pasting pictures onto a paper (or cardstock/posterboard). We download and printed alot of pics from the internet. Stuff that would have been around the year he was born including famous products, TV shows, sayings, and people.
Your idea sounds great! Go with it. 
