How To Make A Memorial In Picasa

This post was inspired by 

I Miss Those Close To Me Who Are Now In Heaven As Beautiful Angels on Facebook.

This person has made hundreds of memorials for people out of the kindness of their heart, but people still complained. They are only one person and can only do so many things! So I am going to teach you to make the memorial for yourself.

Start by opening Picasa. If you do not have Picasa, get it. It's free, useful, and so easy. You don't have to know a single thing about photo editing to use it!

Highlight a picture or two of your loved ones, right click, and hit "create picture collage"

Put together as many or as few pictures of your loved on as you like.

 Once you've arranged the photos the way you like, you can begin adding text. Think of what you would like the memorial to say about the one you lost. My memorial is for Barbara Park, a children's author who died recently, so I chose to add a quote from her book And of course, I added her name and birth and death dates.

You can put a quote that the person liked to say, or you can just write things about them.

For example: Beloved husband and father

In order to add a photo to the background, simply right-click on one of the photos and hit "add as background". You can the smaller image from the collage by right clicking and hitting remove. This will not remove your background. You can use white, a favorite color of the individual, or a beautiful photo that reminds you of Heaven.

If you are going to distribute copies it would be best to use your own photo or a public domain photo as the background. For example, this picture of clouds.

cloud photo credit: Venicius

If you followed the instructions you should now have a beautiful memorial that you can save to your desktop, print and frame, put on a t-shirt, or pass out to your family. Best wishes in your recovery from grief!

-Teddy

How To Make Yourself A Twin...or Triplets, or Quadruplets (in Artweaver)

Today's post is way simpler than you might think. The first thing you are going to need is either a photographer or someone who can hold very, very still while holding the camera to take the picture. Tripods work best for this project.

First take the pictures. Make sure that once you take the first photo, you move to a separate location, so that you're not blocking yourself. This is important.

Open the two files in Artweaver. Copy the "top twin" (the one that closest to the camera) and paste over the bottom twin.

Now change your top layer's opacity to 50% so that you can see the "bottom twin" (the one in the background). Select around the bottom twin and delete that area of the top layer. 

After you have set your top layer's opacity back to 100, eliminate any "dust" with the eraser tool. Make sure shadows and things like that are showing for both twins.

The final result should look something like this.

Give A Photo A Painted-Edge Look

This is for a simple painted/choppy edge effect in Artweaver. I'm going to do another tutorial on this later. But for now, I'll be showing you the simplest method I know.

First open the photo you want to give the effect to in Artweaver.

Now add a new layer and fill it with white.

Duplicate the background layer (photo) and drag it above the white layer.

Begin erasing the edges of the photo, making back and forth strokes as you go down the side.

You can do two long strokes over the top and bottom.

Or anyway you want.

Later, I will show you how to get a similar effect using your paintbrush tool.

How To Put Your Photo Into A Vignette In Artweaver

While there is a way to give your photo a vignette in Picasa, I don't highly recommend it. It's just not the same.

Today, we're going to give one of your photos a portrait-worthy vignette. Just follow along.

First, I open my photo in Artweaver and add a new layer. Then I duplicate my background layer and drag it above the "new layer". I'm going to use my paint tool to fill in the new layer as white.

Now I go to my selection tool. I change the Shape to an Ellipse. I set the Feather to 50.

Now I select the entire photo.

Then I right-click and click Inverse. I now have all of the outside area of the photo selected. This is going to become the white area.

I hit delete.

Now I have a lovely photo in a portrait-style vignette. All I have to do now is save it!

Make A Photo Look Vintage In Picasa

This is a really easy one. In fact, a lot of photo editors allow you to make a photo look "vintage" at the push of a button. But today I want to teach you to it with a bit more realism. First select a photo with no obvious "modern day stuff" in the background. Anything from cars to windows that look modern should NOT be in the photo. Your cellphone or watch? Taken them and set them to the side.

For my photo I wore a vintage style dress. I chose a solid wall as my background and bed/blankets as my setting. You won't really be able to tell the blankets are modern once I'm done.

I started by going to "Tuning" in Picasa. I set the Shadows Level to halfway.

Once I've done this, I convert the photo to Sepia.

Now add film grain at the max level.

Ta-da! What a nice vintage-style photo you have!

Make a Brick Wall Your Background In TwistedBrush Studio

 Today we're going to deal a messy background by turning it into a brick wall. This is really easy to do in TwistedBrush Studio. This art program has many features, but this is definitely one of my favourite.

I'll stat with this photo of me and Jean-Luc. I'm wearing a t-shirt over a swimsuit and the background (my office) is a bit messy, but it's a great picture! Here's how I'm going to save it. 

First, open the photo you want to add your brick wall background to. It might be a good idea to resize it so it is less than 2000 by 2000, so that the bricks look bigger.

Now duplicate the layer. A lot of times I suggest working on the bottom layer. This time we're going to work on the top layer. First, I had a Gaussian blur to the top layer. The blurrier, the better. You could also use the smudge brush and just smudge all around the photo's subject.

Next you're going to choose Filters > Texturize Bump > Surface > Bricks 1

Using your eraser tool, start eliminating the bricks over the subject of the photo.

I decided last minute that I wanted to make my subjects radiant. To do this, I chose Filters > Photo > Radiant 2 and applied it to the bottom layer.

Now save your project.

You can crop it in TwistedBrush I crop it in Picasa. I chose to crop mine in Picasa so I could make it an 8x10.

How to make a neat "Golden" effect in Picasa

Today, we're going to make what I like to call a "Golden" effect. I'm going to use a picture of my mom's dog Peanut with his head in the grass for this tutorial.

First, open Google Picasa and select the image you want to try this effect on.

Next open your green effects bucket.

Now click on Cinemascope and uncheck Letterbox

Once you've applied this effect, click on Cross Process.

And that's all you have to do! You should have a nice golden photo.