A number of people have expressed interest in how I go about illustrating my diaries. It’s really not that difficult, and with a little determination, anyone can learn how to do it.
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You’ll need an image or photo-editing program. I use Photoshop. If you’re lucky enough to have a copy of that, you’re in business. Photoshop is the mack daddy of photo editing software but is pretty pricey. Usually only artists or other professionals can justify the cost. There are less expensive alternatives around including some freeware. I found these with a quick search at tucows.com:
I haven’t used either of the packages but Photobie supports multiple layers which is a feature I use pretty heavily. The same sort of work can be done without it, but having it sure helps.
Photobie 2.5.5
This next one advertises ease of use. Again, I haven’t tried it.
MAGIX Photo Clinic for free 4.5
There are tons of other options. Here’s a link to an extensive review of photo-editing packages.
Photo Editing Software Review
Next, you need to select a photo hosting service. This is basically a place where you park your images on the Internets. In your diary, you include a line of code that pulls your pictures from there for display. This is all tranparent to your reader and keeps kos from having to provide gazigabytes of storage space for everbody’s pics.
There are any number of photo hosting sites as well. I recommend Flickr.com because they won’t delete your photos just because you put a Hitler mustache on Dubya. Most of these services are free up to a certain megabyte limit. Once you reach that limit you can either delete older stuff to make room or pay a small fee for increased or unlimited space.
Later we’ll get into the nuts and bolts of how photo hosting works and the process of preparing the images, but first let’s look at how I find photos to work with in the first place.
Picture Hunting on the Internets
I use Google Images most often, but occasionally branch out from there if I’m having trouble finding something particular.
Let’s say I’m writing a diary about Dubya’s goofy ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech on the aircraft carrier several years ago and I want a picture of commander crotch in his wittle flyboy uniform. First I go to google.com, then I click the Images link, and when that page loads I type in Bush and click Search.
And so voila! Thousands of pages with a gazillion pics of Bush, but pouring through these images for commander crotchrot is going to be time consuming (not to mention nauseating).
Let’s try again and see if we can narrow it down a bit. This time I add the search term ‘carrier’.
There it is, pages full of fearless leader in all his glory, all dressed up for Halloween. Eureka!
If you see a likely thumbnail (little pic), click on it and on the next page click the ‘See full-size image’ link at the top of the page.
If you like the full sized image once it displays, right-click, save picture as, then put it where you want it on your computer.
Image Creation and Preparation
The techniques I use most often are photo collage and photo montage. The two are similar but collage builds an image out of lots of separate images while in montage you come closer to merging the photos into one image.
I use collage the most. Let’s look at that process.
The Collage Technique
I start with a standard size canvas or background. I’ve settled on a size of 450 pixels wide as this accomodates most screen widths and keeps from messing with the display. That way (hopefully) no one has to scroll or deal with a messed up view.
I open photos I’ve downloaded, and copy and paste them onto my canvas. I resize them as necessary and place them where I want them. Multilayer support is very useful for this process (though it can be done without it).
I keep each separate photo on its own layer. This allows me to manipulate them individually. My process includes a lot of messing around until I’m satisfied with the size and position of each piece. I never (or rarely) really know exactly where I’m going till I get there.
If you’re using Photoshop, you’ll want to know about ‘smart objects’. Making a photo a smart object allows you to enlarge it even after you’ve reduced its size. Smart objects retain all of the original image information allowing for ‘non-destructive’ reduction. Without this, once reduced, you cannot then re-enlarge the same photo without loss of resolution and degradation of the image. I find this very useful since I often size and resize my photos till I’m satisfied with the overall composition.
You make a layer in Photoshop a smart object by right clicking on the layer and selecting the option from the drop-down menu.
From there it’s a matter getting everything lined up the way I want, adding text if desired, then saving the image. The last thing I do is ‘Save for the Web’, but first let’s look at the montage technique.
The Montage Technique
The idea of the montage is to merge the separate images into one. I do basically the same thing as with collages but eliminate the backgrounds (most of the time) that serve to separate the images and make greater use of the opacity feature in Photoshop layers.
Here’s an example where I kept some of the backgrounds intact for visual interest.
The main idea is using opacity to merge photos. Here is an image that combines elements of both techniques.
Here the torture images have been faded into the background by manipulating their opacity. The following image shows how the opacity for one of the torture images is set at 50%.
Save for Web
I’ve worked with Photoshop for years but then set it down for a couple of years while I worked exclusively on completing a manuscript for a novel. When I came back to Photoshop I upgraded my copy but was behind the times as far as its capabilities were concerned. A fellow kossack, Land of Enchantment gave me a valuable tip. The Photoshop feature, Save for Web, reduces the size of your image file dramatically. This is important because image files can get very large which becomes problematic when posting them on the Internets. Before LOE turned me on to what was to me a new feature, people on dialup connections complained that it took forever for my diaries to load. Since I’ve started using Save for Web, no further complaints (thanks again LOE!).
If you are not using Photoshop, you should either find an alternative means of compressing or reducing the file size of your images or be sparing in your use of them.
Getting Your Images Into Your Diary
The basic idea of photo hosting is the same though the services each work a little differently – but not by much. My service, Flickr is a little more tedious than some I’ve used, but I love their hands-off approach to censorship. So far I’ve not had the first problem with them.
For any hosting service, first you must register. Then you upload your images, generate the html code, copy it and paste it into your diary. I compose my diaries in MS Word, then post it with all the image code embedded into the dkos new diary page.
After registering, you go to the Flickr homepage.
Click on Upload Photos. This takes you to the Upload Photos to Flickr page.
You use the Browse buttons to find the pics on your computer that you want to upload, and then click the UPLOAD button.
You see a view of your image once it’s uploaded. Click the SAVE button.
You’re taken to Your Photos page where you see your latest uploads. Click on the image you just uploaded.
You are taken to a larger view. Click All Sizes in the menu that appears just above your image. This generates the html code.
Scroll down to the box beneath the image and click in it. The code is highlighted in blue. But you don’t need all this code; you only need part of it. I know, it’s a little awkward.
Click just in front of left-facing arrow img and drag to just after slash right-facing arrow. The preceding and following two characters always seem to want to get selected here. I find it easiest just to let that be and delete them after pasting the code into my diary.
Paste the code you’ve copied into your document where you wish the image to appear.
Delete any extraneous code before left-arrow img and after slash right-arrow if you pick any up as I always seem to do.
That about wraps it up. Once you’ve embedded the code for your images in your document text, just copy and paste the whole thing into the New Diary page at dkos.
There are plenty of graphics mavens here at dkos. I invite them to correct any errors I’ve made or supply any additional information, tips, etcetera.
I hope this helps some of you. Let me know if you have questions.