Tutorial: Making one photo look like a pile of photos

Since this is a pretty low-tech blog, there will be no pictures to follow, so I hope that my explanation and the sample above will be enough. It's a pretty cool technique so I want you all to learn it!

In choosing a photo for your LO, you want to choose one that has multiple subjects, like a family photo, a landscape photo with lots of different objects, or a "still life" kind of photo with many objects. You want to be able to create separate "snapshots" that will lay together to form one "subject" in your LO.

Decide on at least two areas of your photo you want to make into new "photos". Here are the instructions to create a new photo for your "pile". After you finish these directions, you can repeat as many times as you want within your LO. One step that is helpful to make your finished product look realistic is to make sure your stack of "photos" are each the same ratio as a 4" x 6" or a 5" x 7" would be. This will mean more as you go through the instructions.

Here we go:
Add a new transparent layer to match the dimensions of the area you selected (Layers-->New Layer). Move the layer to where you want it. Fill the area with white, or whatever color you want the border of your photos to be (Edit-->Fill with BG color). In the layers dialogue, lower the opacity of this white layer so you can see through it. Rotate until it is at the angle you want (Tools-->Transform tools-->Rotate) . Select by color the white area of your layer (Select-->Select by color, then click on the white area). In the layers dialogue, switch to your photo layer. Select "float" (Select-->Float). Then in the layers dialogue choose new layer (or Layers-->New). Now select your white layer in the layers dialogue and scale it bigger so that it shows from beneath the photo layer you just created. Change the aspect so that the white shows up exactly how you want it. At this point you may want to change the opacity back to 100% so you can see the layer better as well.

Now, take two of these and call me in the morning! LOL! Actually, repeat instructions above as necessary until you have as many photos in your pile as you want. Then, click on the eye next to your original photo in the layers dialogue, and your LO should now look like the one above, with a blank or transparent background. I actually did all of my work on top of a pretty background paper so I didn't have the GIMP grid to look at, but blacked it out for this tutorial.

Once you have created your photo stack, you can merge all of the different layers together so you can save it as it's own file, cut and paste it into a LO, or whatever suits your fancy! I hope you have as much fun with this technique as I have!

Happy Scrapping! ~Jen