If you click on the “New Layer” button at the base of the layers panel, that new “Floating Selection” will turn in to a regular layer of its own. Notice that when you paste something onto the foundation image, you’ll see the words “Floating Selection (pasted layer)” appear in your Layers dialog box. If you want to grab a section of your photo like I did, use the Crop Tool (Shift+C) on the area you want.Īfter cropping, you can copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) onto your foundation image. I chose to use a black and white image of an older Aldous Huxley sitting against a white brick wall, but I didn’t want the whole picture, so I just used part of it. To start building up your photomontage, choose an image with lots of contrast (preferably in black and white) to put on top of your background. Once your background is set, it’s probably a good time to save. When you’re happy with the new dimensions click the “Scale” button found in the dialog box which appeared just as you started to re-size the image. If you’d like to keep the width/height ratio the same, hold down Ctrl as you are dragging. If the background image is too large or too small, you’ll want to select the Scale Tool (Shift+T) then press, hold and drag anywhere inside the image. Using the Move Tool (which looks like crossed arrows in your GIMP toolbox) you can move the image to the position you want. The shortcuts for copy and paste are exactly the same as any word document program or Photoshop, so once that background image is selected, press Ctrl+C (to copy the image) and then click on your foundation image and press Ctrl+V (to paste). You’ll want to copy the entire image and paste it onto your foundation document, which means you’ll need to start out by selecting it. I chose an old map of England, since Huxley was born in England near London. When your new document is created, open all of the images you collected on your topic and choose one to use as a background. (While you’re there, it’s a good time to add your copyright info as well.) Since the photos I’m using were taken off Google Images, I’m going to create a document that has a fairly low resolution to match theirs.ĭepending on your images, you may need a larger starting document. Throughout this tutorial I’ll be referring to this new document as my “foundation” image, simply because I’ll be adding all my other images to it.
Once you’ve got your photos ready, create a new document in GIMP (Ctrl+N) and let’s get started! See what you can come up with using those guidelines. Black and white images can be colored very easily, while colored images take more effort to change. Starting out with high contrast pictures is always a good idea.Ĥ. When blending and layering images, it’s easy to lose contrast. If you only want part of an image, a solid background makes it easier to select and delete the areas you’re not interested inģ.
With photomontage especially, you’re dependent upon the size of the images you use for the size of your final piece.Ģ. You can always make an image smaller, but it’s tough to go the other way. When you pick your own images, whatever the subject, here are some things you might want to look for:ġ. Huxley was the author of Brave New World and Art of Seeing (just to name a few of his books) as well as an early experimenter in LSD long before it was illegal-which is why I grabbed an image of a molecule. NOTE: I’m going to skip the whole copyright discussion for now and just suggest that you use your own photos- at least if you ever plan to display or sell prints of your photomontage at a later date.įor this tutorial I picked out several images relating to Aldous Huxley. In today’s tutorial I’ll be showing you several techniques for creating a digital photomontage using GIMP.īefore we get to that, however, the first thing you’ll need is a bunch of images on a subject that interests you. Photomontage is an art form where multiple photos are combined to create one image, similar to collage. By Margot Dinardi in Art Tutorials > GIMP Help