Create easy digital collages with Photomix

Do you have a pile of snapshots in a box, tucked away in a dusty, dingy corner of the closet, attic or basement? I sure do. Or maybe you have cluster of Picture CDs from the drugstore photo developer? What do you do with them?

You could put them in albums, which take up even more space. You could by a bunch of those collage photo frames. Or, you could use Photomix from fCoder, at http://www.photomix.com, to make your own photo collages.

How's it work?

Photomix is a photo layout and composition program that includes backgrounds, masks, and templates for layering and collaging your digital photos. You can also create your own templates, backgrounds, and masks, and then add them to the library for later use.

The first time I ran Photomix, an on-screen tutorial showed up to guide me through my first collage. This was very nice, as I didn't have to go digging through help files or manuals and was able to just dive right in. And because we men never read instructions, it was great that Photomix showed me what to do right off.

To use Photomix, you first pick a template, which consists of various sized image windows. The number of image windows ranges from one to about a dozen. The size and positioning of the windows is completely adjustable, so if you're not satisfied with a provided template, you can alter it to suit your needs. Figure A shows the workspace with the templates selection on the right.

Once you choose your template, you can choose a background to fill in the empty spaces between the image windows, use an image as a background, or choose to have no background other than color.

Now that you've got a background and a template, it's time to add some images. At the bottom of the workspace is the image addition area where you'll load the images you want to use for this collage. Figure B shows the image thumbnails for this construction, with the Layer window on the right. Inserting your images into the collage is as easy as drag-and-drop. In fact, pretty much everything in Photomix works by drag-and-drop.

Now you have the background and your images arranged in the template. Let's fancy-up those images a bit with some masks. Figure C shows some of the masks that come with Photomix. Masks can dress up an otherwise plain collage by fading in an image or creating a unique border around them. In addition, Photomix comes with its own editor for touching up photos.

Figure D shows a typical compilation collage, wherein ordinary snapshots and portraits are combined.

There's virtually no limit to what can be done with Photomix. Effects such as mixing black and white or sepia with color images, such as in Figure E can make a real statement. Photomix also has the ability to insert text into the project for captions and expressions.

The real boon of a program like Photomix is to the amateur wedding photographer. Imagine how impressed your clients would be when presented with composite images of their wedding. Photomix is excellent for conveying timelines like in Figure F.

Figure G shows the tossing of the bouquet and garter at the reception, using the cake as the background.

I'm done, now what?

So what do we do with our collage now that we're done with it? Honestly, I don't know. There are several output options presented in Photomix. You can print to your home printer, set it as wallpaper, or save it as a mixed image. I'm not exactly sure what the intended output is, and as of the writing of this piece, the Photomix developers have not gotten back to me on that topic.

I for one don't see why anyone would want to print out psuedo-photos on their home printer when it's so inexpensive to take a digital file to Walgreens or Wal-Mart and have a real photo made. Some of the more inexpensive home photo printers really just can't do a photo justice, especially at larger sizes.

Photomix can save the image in just about any format you'd like, except as far as I can tell, it's limited to 72 dpi. That's not all that great if you're looking to have a print made. You can adjust the resolution according to device, and I've found that by setting it as high as possible, you can get a little better quality out of a saved image file. An image that comes out at 24 x 36 inches at 72 dpi would be the same as 12 x 18 inches at 150 dpi, and so forth. But that's not really the way you'd want it. You'd want to be able to create a 9 x 11 inch document at 150 dpi, without playing around with work-arounds.

What I'd like to see in a future version of Photomix is the ability to save the images at a high dpi for quality output at a photo lab. Other than that, I really can't see where Photomix needs any further improvement. One thing I should probably mention about Photomix is that it doesn't have an Undo feature, and that's because it doesn't need one. Any applied action can be removed at any later point, regardless of what has been added afterwards, simply by deleting it on the Layers screen.

I rate Photomix from fCoder at 3 out of 5. This program could very easily have been a 4, but if you're at all familiar with my other articles, you'll know that customer service is very important to me. It has been a week since I requested further product information from the developers, and I still haven't had a response back. I think that's a bit long for a support response, so it cost them a rating point.