14 Collage to Landscape

[BillGebhardt]

In Elements 14, Editing in Expert, how do I change Collage from portrait to landscape?

Bill Gebhardt

[rupalia98692837]

Hi,

You can use crop tool to change the image from Portrait to Landscape. With the crop tool selected there is a drop down box (Use Photo Ratio) from which you can choose Aspect Ratio or you can specify custom values in the width and Height boxes in the option bar.

Thanks,
Rupali

[BillGebhardt]

I am familiar with cropping an image. What I want to do is; open edit, then expert, then pull down create and click on Collage, and change that Green 8x10 green sheet (with all those silly frames) from portrait to landscape, I would also like to get rid of all those &%@#*@  "frames" without having to delete them each time I do a collage and even change the green color.

Bill

[MichelBParis · Accepted solution]

BillGebhardt wrote:

I am familiar with cropping an image. What I want to do is; open edit, then expert, then pull down create and click on Collage, and change that Green 8x10 green sheet (with all those silly frames) from portrait to landscape, I would also like to get rid of all those &%@#*@ "frames" without having to delete them each time I do a collage and even change the green color.

Bill

Bill,

This is a case where you should really try to do the collage manually. So much quicker than the guided way!

You create your canvas freely in the 'expert' view.

You open the various files necessary for your background and collage items all at once in the photobin.

You select them all in the photo bin, right click and choose 'minimize'

You select the canvas and move each component individually from the photobin to the canvas. The components will be added as layers over the canvas. They will be shown as 'smart' layers, meaning you are working with all the pixels of each original component; no quality loss when resizing, rotating...

Now you'll have to deal with each layer individually; resizing, rotating, changing the order in the layer stack, adding borders and layer styles... (tip: you may prefer to uncheck the 'autom select layers').

Another tip: as soon as you have resized each layer approximately, 'simplify' to have access to all edits... and to avoid saving a huge psd file storing every component in original size...

[BillGebhardt]

Michel,

Thanks for the help. I much prefer doing it myself instead of Adobe dummed down way. Color comes out a lot better.

But I can't find automatic select layers or simplify. I'm sure they make sense but where are they?

Bill

[MichelBParis]

BillGebhardt wrote:

Michel,

Thanks for the help. I much prefer doing it myself instead of Adobe dummed down way. Color comes out a lot better.

But I can't find automatic select layers or simplify. I'm sure they make sense but where are they?

Bill

Since most of the job of doing a collage is to put each new component on its own layer in the layer stack, you must be able to move, resize and rotage your layers.

That's where you select the 'Move' tool on your tool pallet on the left. The options of the move tool appear in the bottom tool options. If you check 'autoselect', that means that if you click in the editing space in a spot belonging to a layer, that layer will be selected in the layers pallet on the right. If you don't select it, you'll have to select your layer in the layer stack on the right panel. That last option lets you select a layer which does not appear in the workspace because it is hidden by another one.

'Simplify' is an option of the layers. If you have  set the menu Edit >> preferences >> General without checking the option to 'disable smart objects' that means that any file you open in the photo bin is opened as a 'smart object' (it's the default choice). Smart layers can be resized or rotated without quality loss because they always work from a copy of the full original imported image; when you 'simplify' them, the layer is resized and resampled; that means it does take much less space in the final layered .psd file, but the advantage is that all editing features for layers are available. It's logical to simplify the layer once you have resized your imported file approximatively to the final dimension.

[BillGebhardt]

Michel,

Thanks for your patience and tutoring.

Bill