How to Create Photo Collages with Picasa 3
This How-to serves two purposes, the first is to inform all of Gil’s Method readers that Google has released Picasa 3 Beta. The other is to update and create a new guide to creating photo collages in Picasa 3. I felt that the changes between Picasa 2 and Picasa 3 are significant enough to warrant a separate guide, the new features to create collages and instructions on how to make your own collage are summarized below.
- Ability to edit collages
- Options to set collage aspect ratio
- Quicker response time
- Additional collage types
- Grid spacing
- Much more…
Below you will find the steps necessary to create your own picture collage using Picasa 3. if you have any comments or questions, please post them below.
To view the original Picasa 2 Guide, follow this link
1. Download and install Picasa 3 (Free Download)
2. Select the photographs you wish to create a collage from
3. Click on the Collage button located on the bottom portion of the screen.
4. In the Settings tab, click on the drop-down arrow to select the type of collage you wish to create
Note: In this tutorial I chose the Mosaic collage
5. Once you’ve selected the type of collage, you can modify the space between each picture by adjusting the Grid Spacing slider, the changes you make will be reflected on the pane to the right (your collage preview).
6. In this section you have several options, once you’ve made the options below, click on the Create Collage button to generate your collage.
Background Options: You can pick a solid color or one of the pictures in your collage. To chose a picture from your collage, select the desired picture and click on the Use selected button.
Page Format: This drop-down gives you the ability of selecting the aspect ration of your collage (I believe it automatically selects it for you based on your resolution, I have not confirmed this yet).
Collage Orientation: This allows you to chose the orientation of your collage, portrait or landscape.
Note: Collage generation may take some time depending on the number of pictures and the quality of the pictures.
7. Your collage should be complete, the example above is the one I generated.
8. Once you’ve finished with your collage, you have the ability to go back and edit it, with the collage selected in Picasa 3, click on the Edit Collage button (repeat the steps above).
hey,
umm..I created the collage using picasa but when i click on ‘create collage’ , it just appears as ‘in progress’ and aftr a while a word ‘DRAFT’ appears from nowhere. And I’m not able to figure out how to remove it or whatever can be done??
Namita,
The amount of time it takes to create the collage varies quite a bit depending on your computer’s configuration, the number of pictures you add, and the size of the images. If you are using a lot of pictures that are large…it may take longer to create the collage. If it’s taking a really long time, make sure you have the latest version of Picasa and try creating the collage with a smaller amount of images.
how to save it?why draft is coming on it?
Aliya,
Thanks for your question. It’s a DRAFT because you have not saved the video yet, to create the video click on the Create Movie button on the left pane. Hope this helps.
Hi,
Last weekend quickly learned some basic features of Picasa Collages. Excellent and easy to use. However during the limited time I did not find a way to save the created collage as independent jpg image which could be used outside Picasa. Is this possible? Pls advice. Thanks.
Hanski – when you created the collage, the collage itself should be an image file. Please let me know if you need help with this.
I don't see the settings tab. HELP
Karen – Did you select the images and click on the Collage button? If you did this you should see the Settings tab on the left pane (in Collage). Hope this helps.
bueno yo quiero descargar un collage de picaso 3 y no puedo
@Camuu!- Donde esta localizado el collage que deseas descargar?
On my Picasa 3 the program doesn’t show the Edit Collage button. Any ideas to help me out?
@Country Boy – Do you have the collage selected? More importantly when you double-click on the movie (slideshow you created) you should see an Edit Movie button on the top left next to the Back to Library button. Let me know if this helps.
thank you