Collage: September Diptych

It's been a while, but I finally made some new desktop picture collages. This month, I was not very creative and just searched Flickr with the word "September".

Because I have two monitors, I created two complimentary collages, like I did with my fog diptych.

September 1 by S. King

September 2 by S. King

The first image is on my main monitor and the second is to my right. I like how looking from left to right is like looking from the beginning to the end of September, from the last days of summer to the start of October and Halloween season.

Here are the 4 images I used as my sources:

I used the Pixellate > Pointillize filter a lot in both collages. For the second, I also used the halftone filter. One of the pointillized layers from the boat image is in the moon picture, to add more texture and color. I used the threshold filter on a cut-out of the cat to make the shape stand out and look more like a shadow.

Photo Collage: "Disjointed"

If you look deep into the depths of my web site's archive, you will see a section titled Desktop Pictures. I began creating these collages in Photoshop back in 2002, though it wasn't until January of 2003 that I began to use the single word or phrase searches that I've stuck with since. You can see more recent creations in my DeviantART gallery.

I used to use Google Images, but now I'm trying to be a good netizen by only searching Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr. Unfortunately, this cuts down on the number of serendipitous screenshots and gif diagrams I get, but the photo resolution is better, which has become important as screen sizes have increased and I've made my collages bigger.

So, here's my formula:

1. Pick a word or phrase. For May 2012, I chose "disjointed."
2. Search for CC-licensed images on Flickr using that word.
3. Select the most interesting results and download.
4. Use the downloaded images (or a subset) to create a collage in Photoshop.

"Disjointed," May 2012

click to see full size image

I had some great photos for this collage, but I was having trouble putting them together. Then, I read the article Breaking Bits in Pretty Ways on BoingBoing and got inspired.

The background is a photo of some shopfronts by Nick Findley. I used the Cutout filter with the edge simplicity up pretty high to make it flat and angular. Then I adjusted the colors until the green gate stood out.

The letter Y was photographed by Monceau. I masked out the background and used Add Noise with a fairly high number. Then, I made a copy of the Y cut out, used Mosaic with a cell size of 4 to make it look pixellated, and adjusted the color so it matched the door. I set the layer blend to Color Dodge and gave the Y below it an opacity of 33% so the background showed through.

The wing was probably the toughest part. I cut it out of a photo by Travis S of a girl on a beach holding a dead bird's wing. After removing the background and the girl's hand, I upped the contrast and took it from color to black and white. Using black and white as my colors, I applied the Graphic Pen filter. Finally, I set the blend mode to Screen so only the white showed up, and added a layer filled with one of the grays from the background at 27% to keep the wing from being pure white.

I think there are many ways to interpret this: "Wingy," "Birdy," "Fly why?" I haven't decided myself. But I'm really happy with how the final image came out, and I think it definitely looks appropriately disjointed.