Creating a montage with blends

[timi]

Is it possible to make a montage of various photos, with areas erased (e.g. get rid of hard edges and erase areas to allow the pic beneath to show through) like I would in Photoshop using layers and the eraser tool set to work like an airbrush?

[heinz-oz]

I could be wrong, only looked at PhotoExpress once and decided it was too rudimentary for what I wanted, but I don't think PExpress is set up to do that kind of thing. PhotoImpact, however, will.

[timi]

Thanks, Heinz. I had a little look at Photo Impact trial version last night. Looks like it does what I want it to do, but(!) how do you move things around without accidentally selecting the wrong layer? In Photoshop (which I use at work every day, on a Mac) when you highlight a layer in the layers palette, it's only things on that layer that are moved or affected.
When layers (in Photo Impact) are locked, I get a message stopping me from doing anything with that layer; fair enough. But how do I move, say, the photo which is two or three layers down, without the program thinking I am trying to pick up the layer above? Am I making sense?! . . .

[heinz-oz]

Funny enough, in PI you use the "Layer Manager" for that even though PI does not have layers per see What you would call a layer in PS is called an object in PI. Each object can be manipulated separately, resized, altered, you name it.

I know a lot of people who use PI for many things even though they have PS as well. All these programs have their pro's and con's. The biggest advantage of PI over PS is arguably the price, not matched by a proportional increase in performance by PS.

If you are used to work with PS at work, you should be very quickly able to judge for yourself which program suits you better. The work flow is different but a lot of PS plug-ins work with PI also.

I would suggest to head over to this site http://www.pircnet.com/ and become a member of this forum http://p083.ezboard.com/. You will need to register for this but that is free. In there you will find a lot of artists who use both and other graphics programs as well.

[timi]

Thanks again, Heinz. Price is my main consideration for this kind of software to use at home on a PC. Thanks for the links - will try them. By the way, do you never sleep!

[heinz-oz]

Hello timi,

as a matter of fact, I do sleep occasionally usually about 8 hours earlier than you During your summer, which is our winter, the time diff is MEZ +8.

During our summer, the diff is MEZ +10 because we have daylight saving.

[lobster]

I'm late to the game here, you may have already found another program, but re:your original question ~

Is it possible to make a montage of various photos, with areas erased (e.g. get rid of hard edges and erase areas to allow the pic beneath to show through) like I would in Photoshop using layers and the eraser tool set to work like an airbrush?

Of course it's possible! But instead of erasing the unwanted part, as you would in Photoshop, you rather use PhotoExpress to cut out the wanted parts, using the 'Selection' tools.

::::

Create a New Document of the size you wish your monttage to be.

Browse and find the picture(s) you wish to use within the montage.

Under the 'Selection' tools, you will find that you can choose to cut out a portion this picture using either a shape, or by color, or freehand - on the left, you will find a few options, such as drawing your shapes from the center or softening your edges, etc.

After you have 'cut out' the portion of the picture you would like to use in your montage, simply right click and copy it,then go to the template you created in step one and paste it.

You can then continue adding elements, arranging and re-arranging them ~ you can play the transparency of each one, as well, by right clicking on the individual objects. There are TONS of things you can do using PhotoExpress!

Good Luck!

: lobster

[timi]

Sorry for the delay in replying! Thanks, Lobster. Will try it, though I now have PhotoImpact 11 too which is doing what I want it to!