Merging Photos

[okyou]

Hi,

I have to merge many upright photos taken by smartphone to a 1080p background to be used in ViedoStudio project. At this point, for every 2 upright photos, I have to create a 1080p background then copy and paste each of the photo to the background and then adjust their sizes and save. I wonder is there more streamline procedure to speed up my current process.

The 1st photo

The 2nd photo

The final output

Thanks for your help

[ehume]

Three ways, but I'm sure there are more.

1. If you are printing, select each image, then go to the Menu > File > Print Layout... window. Drag the images to the output screen. Left-click somewhere inside each image to select it, then resize to taste (your images are too wide to fit side-by-side on an 8.5x11 page unaltered, but maybe with custom paper . . .). Print.

2. If this is for the Web, simply make a new document at whatever width you want, and pick black as your background color. Go to each image, do a ctrl-a to select the entire image. Then ctrl-c to copy it. Then ctrl-e to paste as a selection. The selection will be grounded when you left-click. You can use tghe Pick tool or the Move tool to move your selection once it has been grounded.

3. If you like what you have, use the Flood Fill or the Color Changer tools to change your colors. How do you use the former? use the Magic Wand tool to select the gray areas, then Flood Fill them with black.

[okyou]

Thanks for your idea.

[Jean-Luc]

I wonder is there more streamline procedure to speed up my current process.

You could take one of the PSP Templates (File / New From Template) and modify it to suit your need.

[JoeB]

I'm not sure which part of the process you are hoping to be able to automate or make more efficient. As already suggested, you can create a template for the 1080p background that you need to hold your other two images. According to the image info in your posted images, that background is 250ppi, so if it's also 1080p it will require creating that template at 1920 pixels x 1080 pixels at 250ppi. Once that template is open in your workspace you can simply duplicate it and use the duplicate on which to add the other two images as layers. You can duplicate the template as many times as you want to use for as many two other smaller images as you want.

However, it appears that you're not just resizing the images but cropping them as well. Or are you just resizing the smaller images using the pick tool until only the part of the image you want to show is visible with the rest simply hidden outside of the 1080p window? Does doing the latter work as far as importing the 1080p image into Video Studio?

In any event, whether cropping or resizing and hiding the unwanted parts, it also appears that each of the two smaller images require such cropping at different sizes, because each of them needs different amounts of the image removed depending on image content and the part of the image you wish to keep visible. So I can't see any method of automating that part of the procedure because the crop area of each image has to be independently determined by you.

There are likely a few ways to save a few clicks on menus, etc., but without knowing all of the exact steps you are presently taking to achieve your final output it's impossible to determine what could be done to save those clicks.

[okyou]

Hi
Thanks for your idea. Currently I have to do (assuming I have the 2 upright photo already in edit area )
1. Create the 1080p background ( Use template )
2. Copy photo1.
3. Go to the background and paste as a layer.
4. Adjust the copied photo1 to match the edge of the background. (to one side).
5. Repeat the same procedure with photo2.

I am wondering is there anything that when I click at photo1 , it will copy/paste and auto snap to the edge of the background on one side/border and when I click on the photo1, then it will snap to the other side/border. Maybe I am asking too much here but any idea to speed up step 2-5 would improve the process. Thanks again.

[hartpaul]

If you have a lot of images then I would first go and crop all those images and then do a bulk resize to the 1080 pixels high. This in itself would help to streamline part of the process because you are repeating the same few steps over and over , but you need to do this as each crop is individual and cannot be automated as only you know what parts to keep in and what parts to lose. These would all be in a new desktop folder opened in Explorer.

When you make your first 1920 x 1080 template , save it as a preset. Then when you need a new template PSP will remember the last one you used so it becomes click the New button (icon under File), press the enter key.

Now I would open my folder of images in Explorer and drag the first two onto the work space (Windows >Tabbed Documents is unticked of course) They might be A1 and A2.
To get them onto your template you do not have to go through the routine of Copy and Paste as new layer. Just make sure your layers palette is visible, make A1 active (click on its title bar and then drag its layer thumb on top of your template. Make A2 active and do the same . You will now have three layers: Template, A1, A2.
A1 and A2 will be in the center of the template and A2 will be hiding A1. A2 will be the active layer. Now do Objects > Align > Right.
Then Make A1 layer active and do Objects > Align > Left. This will align the correct images with their respective right and left sides of the template. The you right click any layer and do Merge > Merge All Flatten).

But wait there is more. These last steps can be customized to fit on a new toolbar so it becomes click A1 layer, click toolbar button to align left. Click A2 layer, Click toolbar button to Align Right, Click toolbar Merge button.

You would only need to set this customized toolbar up once and then it is 5 clicks to get all arranged and merged.
This how your new customized toolbar would look:

01ArrangeToolbar.jpg (15.59 KiB) Viewed 2373 times

[JCBrown]

I would not use PSP to do this; I would use the video editor. I don't have VideoStudio, but I expect that it works just as well as Pinnacle or other nle's.
Set the default import duration of the images to be what you want.
In Pinnacle, simply import one photo onto track 1, the other directly below it onto track 2 and the background directly below it onto track 3. Extend the duration of the background as required.
The images are imported centred, and depending on the aspect ratio, either full height or full width or both. In your case, the photos are portrait so they would be full height with black (or the background) on either side.
Select the photo on track 1 and adjust the horizonal position to be in line with the left side of the screen.
Select the photo on track 2 and adjust the horizonal position to be in line with the right side of the screen.
Save the effects for each of the photos, example, "leftph" and "rightph".
Now simply import the images that you want at the left onto track 1 and the for the right onto track 2.
Apply the "leftph" effect to the images on track 1 and "rightph" to the images on track 2, and you're done.

[okyou]

Thanks for all your recommendations. I will try them out and see which one fit me best. Regards

[JCBrown]

The other thing about using the video editor, is that you can still do transitions on each of the photos separately.