Combining photos into grid thing?

RedWylder · Feb 17, 2011

Ummm well I've got an idea for my high school students for presenting their photographs (dear god, did I mention I've gotten myself into teaching a photo class?). I am asking that they take 9 photos of the same object all in different ways and I'd like them to present all 9 of them together in a 3x3 square. The only issue is I can't seem to figure out a free and easy way to do this. They don't have any fancy editing programs. Some of them have Gimp but I still haven't figure Gimp out enough to be able to teach it. Any other ideas?

loopy · Feb 17, 2011

Check out Picasa, it is free and you can do this using the collage feature.

Big Mike · Feb 17, 2011

Not ideal...but if the students have access to MS Word or similar. You could create a template with 9 picture boxes. Then all they would have to do, is drop their photos into each of the boxes.

ghache · Feb 17, 2011

You could slip some post processing in the exercise.

Have them crop the pictures lets say into a 1X1 format.

have them create a blank transparent file in photoshop of 3 X 3 so they can cut an
paste everything inside.

every picture lets say have 1000 pixels X 1000 pixels, they can create the blank file 3000 pixel by 3000 pixels and fit all 9 photos inside.

that way they will learn how to use the crop tool and how to create a picture montage.

if they all have access to photoshop of course.

bdavisx · Feb 17, 2011

+1 for Picasa, we recommend it to all of our wedding clients who get a disk with their package.

RedWylder · Feb 17, 2011

Thank you all for the advice. MS word is doable and perhaps picasa, photoshop is a lovely idea but it wont happen for these kiddos. They don't even have proper cameras to work with (cheap fixed lens cameras) but it was the best I could do for low economic students. They're just having fun getting out of the traditional classroom.

Does picasa require a download? I uploaded some pictures today on picasa/google or something like that and couldn't find a collage option for the life of me. I may just have overlooked it so I'll see what I can find.