Well I've been meaning to do this write up! It's a bit long. I use Photoshop, but it's expensive and I know it's not available to everyone. I think Picasa (from Google, free) would work as well, but I haven't tried it myself.
From the taking-the-photo standpoint, I think about what I want to show for each outfit in the final collage and take the according photos. Each morning when I take photos, I set the white balance and exposure to ensure the best color and crispness.
Then the photo editing process is as follows:
- Select least goofy/most flattering photos
- Adjust contrast in photos so everything looks sharp; ensure colors are correct and if not, I adjust them. Sometimes the camera tilts, so I also may need to rotate slightly.
- Resize and crop all photos to dimension 800x1067. Much easier to collage when all the images you start with are all the same size & ratio.
- Open one image, expand canvas horizontally.
- Copy other images desired in final collage into the expanded image (basically add in all the images as layers so you can modify them individually).
- Move and resize/crop rest of images as necessary for collage design. I usually have 1 or 2 looks at 100% size, and then for smaller images I resize to 50%, stack them, and then trim.
- Crop, save, and finish!
Not sure if that helps or if it's too succinct. Let me know!
EDIT: I spend 10-30 minutes taking the photos in the morning, and it usually takes me about 15-20 minutes to fully edit and collage them.
EDIT EDIT: I added an unprocessed photo (#1), edited photo (#2) and a finished resized photo (#3) for comparison. #1 and #2 are actually considerably larger in size than the final size I use for the collages in #3.
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