Collage tips in CS3. Please help?

[paterson00]

I have created my very first collage in cs3 and am well pleased just to be able to do it. I have basically taken lots of faces from my family and stuck them all together slightly overlapping and i intend to take it off to the printers and have it blown up to a poster size of some sort to go on the wall.

I intend on doing some more for myself and also my family. My question is this, is there be anything i should know that would give a better effect as i have no experience with cs3 as i have only just been given it. All i have done is copied and pasted, adjusted the hue/saturation and also the brightness a bit, but thats it. Is there a way of dramatically improving the collage?

ANY tips would be good no matter how obvious they seem as i am as amatuer as they get.

many thanks in advance.

 

[03 black gt]

I am also an amateur, but post up a pic of what you have already done so we a better idea.

 

[paterson00]

I would love to but i dont know how.....

 

[dbrandon]

I would love to but i dont know how.....

Save it as a jpeg, upload it somewhere (like photobucket.com), then use the provided IMG code in a post.

 

[Meggie]

a really simple way to embed a photo in a post if you dont have a photobucket account is to go to tinypic.com

upload the photo there

then copy and paste the link in your post here (itll specify which link is for forums)

 

[paterson00]

the collage isnt finished yet but you get the idea of how it will look. Any tips will be gratefully received as i have used all my expertise (none) on this one so far

here it is

http://s260.photobucket.com/albums/ii29/paterson00/?action=view&current=collage1243.jpg

 

[Sideburns]

Most of the faces are distorted.
When you scale a face, make sure you aren't distorting it by holding ctrl (or maybe it's shift)...I can never remember which program is what.

Anyways...that's important.

Another big thing, is the DPI. A lot of them appear to be different and blocky.
Keep it like 300 or so,

If you're blowing it up huge, keep the resolution high enough (big enough canvas)...

 

[Dax]

Smoother cutting on the images would help a lot. A good way to do that is select the image with the box tool, copy it and paste it onto the collage as a new layer and then erase everything but the face around it. If you don't understand that explanation let me know and I will try to explain another way.

 

[chrisk121]

Most of the faces are distorted.
When you scale a face, make sure you aren't distorting it by holding ctrl (or maybe it's shift)...I can never remember which program is what.

Anyways...that's important.

Another big thing, is the DPI. A lot of them appear to be different and blocky.
Keep it like 300 or so,

If you're blowing it up huge, keep the resolution high enough (big enough canvas)...

Its shift...

 

[paterson00]

I understand copying and pasting and then deleting the edges around it but not layers at all and Layers seem to feature as quite an important thing to know within photoshop.