Joining photos side by side
or
top to bottom

by Matt Trotta 1-19-02
To demonstrate joining photos side by side I will use a school group picture. In the year book the two pictures were on facing pages. So each page had to be scanned into the computer. If you plan on doing a panaramic photo with 5, 10, or more photos the proccess is the same. Don't contrict yourself to side by side. Experiment with s/s and top and bottom. You could create a hugh wall mural. These 2 pictures will be called Page 1 and Page 2.
 Joining your 2nd photo with the first can be done several ways. Here we will have both in their own window as if they were two seperate files. Which in this case they are. Page 1.jpg  and Page 2.jpg. We will be using Page 1.jpg as the base file or base canvas dragging page 2.jpg from it's canvas over to page 1's. Right now you can't drag Page 2 over because the canvas that page 1 image is sitting on is only as large as the image itself. In other words the canvas is underneath the image and you don't see it. It would be like trying to park your car in a parking space that already had a car parked in it. You can make the canvas larger and then you would see it's edges around the image, almost like a frame. Hey fill it in with a color and bingo you would have a framed picture. This example we only need to enlarge the canvas width not the height and we really only need it to be big enough to fit under the Page 1 and Page 2 image. My 2 pictures I know are the same size so just doulbing the width is all I need to do here. Although you can use a canvas size bigger than you need and that will give you extra room to move the pictures into position before the final crop. I usually will enlage both Height and width 1 inch more than I need to account for uneven borders and centering. The final crop will get rid of all uneven edges and overhanging canvas sides. Now open up the canvas size adjustment window and make the needed size changes. Notice the Anchor table at the bottom, it allows you to move the base image into preset positions on the newly sized canvas. We want this Page 1 image to be all the way over to the left to make room for Page 2 so we want to press the left-center square to indicate that. Of course you can always move it manually. Right now if you left the sqaure as is it would keep Page 1 image in the default center. Also you can choose your measurement in pixels or inches or....by clicking on the downarrow. I will change mine now to 1150 pixels wide and click the left-center position square. If you have 3 or more photos you can either enlarge the canvas all right now or a little bit just before each join.
 Now the right side of the canvas is visible until we drag a picture over it. My  page 2 is all ready. But if your using dissimilar photos you need to do a couple of things prior to joining. 1 make sure all are the same resolution, make sure all are the same mode (rgb, index...). Now you can move your attention over to your 2nd photo.

Place image #2 on the screen and with your Move tool from the toolbox click anywhere in #2 and hold and drag over the border outside the picture and into #1 and unclick. You will see a copy of Page 2 appear in the base canvas. At this time you are done with the seperate window of Page 2.jpg. I suggest to close it to preserve your memory. As these panaramics get bigger and bigger they use a lot of memory and file space. As you can see from my layers window the drag automatically placed it onto a seperate layer. That way you can move it around for best placement. When you get it where you want it you can flatten the layers. You are now done. Or if you have more photos to add the act of flattening will save on memory to. If you need to do any cropping or adjusting for the web you can do it now


Like said above you can make the canvas size larger all around then fill it in with a color or design or whatever. Here I enlaged it and just used the paint bucket to fill it with orange. I could enlarge it again and make a two-tone border. You can also use the "Stroke tool" to make precise borders and multi colored borders to.

ALL DONE
CLASS OF 1975 Las Vegas, NV
   
   
   
   
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