SOFTWARE TURNS COLLAGES INTO ART FORM
The collages of yearbooks past were created with photos, scissors and rubber cement and have, like the pun, acquired a low reputation.
However, today’s digital designers have reinvented the collage, using the artistic layering of photos, type and graphics to produce eye-catching and visually appealing art.
This graphic trend can be incorporated into yearbooks using Specular Collage, a Macintosh product, and minimal Adobe Photoshop skills. Collage avoids Photoshop 3.0’s hunger for hard disk space and RAM to manage its layers, channels and paths.
In Collage, the user works with high-resolution, continuous-tone images in a compositing environment. The designer has the flexibility to experiment with and create digital imagery; assembling and manipulating bitmapped images from illustration/drawing programs such as Photoshop, FreeHand and Illustrator.
Because users work with layers of low-resolution screen proxies instead of the original high-resolution images, it is possible to quickly move, apply effects to or change the angle of objects, and see the results almost immediately, without affecting other objects in the design.
It is possible to go back and tweak individual objects as many times as needed because the program keeps an un-rendered version, or project file, and a rendered version, the final output.
Since the image scans must be masked, it is necessary to coordinate with the book’s printer to use the correct scanning settings in Photoshop. Masking will allow the images to appear in Collage as objects without backgrounds.
As with most Mac programs, Collage is intuitive and easy to navigate, but reading chapters two and three of the user’s manual will give a quick review of how the program works (”Before You Begin”-4 pages) and the basics of operating the program (”Creating a Project”-7 pages).
Designers can work in Collage either graphically, numerically, or using dialog boxes, and in either RGB (faster) or CMYK (used in printing) modes. RGB PICTS, RGB and CMYK TIFFS, or RGB and CMYK Adobe Photoshop files can be imported. It is always possible to return the final rendered image to Photoshop to change its mode.
The fun begins after the images are collected using the Import dialog box and placed onto the canvas with the Element Palette list. By dragging the layers in the palette list up or down, the order of the images can be arranged.
Each image is a separate object in a frame that is controlled by buttons in the Tool Box, allowing the user to magnify, move, re-size, rotate, skew, or crop the element.
Adding text with the Text Tool permits the choice of font, size, leading, spacing, alignment, style, and colorÐmuch like a word processor.
Like PageMaker, FreeHand or Illustrator, there are rulers and guides to help with placement and commands to group/ungroup, flip and align the elements.
Elements can be quickly trans-formed with methods like opacity, add, subtract and multiply, or with the built-in feathering and shadows palettes. Most Photoshop filters can also be used.
The fun in Collage is the ability to experiment quickly with multiple images. If the result is not satisfactory, just keep undoing it until a pleasing image is achieved. Once the final result is achieved, render the RGB image into a Photoshop file to change the mode to CMYK or black and white, and then save as a TIFF file for placement into a PageMaker or QuarkXPress document.
Article by Jim Allen
Jim Allen is the yearbook adviser of the Paragon, Highland High School, Palmdale, Calif. The Paragon, which earned 1995 NSPA Pacemaker Finalist and CSPA Silver Crown awards, used Specular Collage in designing its theme and division pages.
Jim has written 1 article(s) for the Idea File.
