Knitting Bee in Collagr

I saw on Lifehacker mention of a web based application called Collagr which can be used to generate collages from your photostream on Flickr or Photobucket. Since I like to play with photographs and images, I thought I'd see what it could do. The results were not quite polished enough to be completely happy with them, but it was easy to do. I think that some experimentation and tinkering with the settings would allow you to make a pretty nice collage.

The image below was generated with the default settings using my Flickr photostream. You put in the URL for your photostream directory or you can search terms. You can tinker with the settings after the images have been grabbed. Things like background color, spacing between pictures, and filter colors. Once generated, Collagr hosts the image. You can download it, or embed the link generated in your page. I chose the thumbnail embed link just to see if it would work in Blogger and it seems to, at least in Preview mode.



The image above used Large for the size setting. The one below used Small.



And this last one used borders instead of stitched.

Photo Collages

I've always enjoyed making collages and remember making them for an art class. My grandmother had lots of pictures of family and places that collected in boxes and discovered the fun of making collages by cutting them up and putting them together for family members as gifts (much to the horror of my genealogy buff cousin Andy who viewed it as desecration of valuable historical evidence for family history).

There's a certain pleasure in taking the photos, sharing them, and keeping them around you. You're surrounded by pleasant memories in a more physical sense.

I've bumped into a free software download that uses your photos as collages on your desktop allowing you to select your choice of photos you want to include on your Windows desktop. It's called Photojoy, a very apt name for the application, because that's what you feel as your desktop loads and changes your selection of photographs. There are a variety of desktop styles to download and you can choose what folders you'd like Photojoy to look in with contents to include in your collage. You can also include photostreams from Flickr.

Photojoy advertises:

Wallpaper Collages – The perfect way to relive your favorite moments
3D Screensavers – Make your photos look spectacular
PhotoToy Widgets – Display your photos in fun ways
Professional photos – 1000’s of them
So much fun and so easy to use

And it really is fun and easy to use. I showed it to my assistant Pam who likes to have photos of her loved ones around her and she immediately was entranced by it. Visitors to our office have noticed it and its use seems to be spreading like a virus in the building. So it obviously hits upon something that is an attraction to many. Photojoy is a joy!

Here's a screenshot of my current desktop selection from Photojoy:



Enjoy those digital pictures you've taken by downloading Photojoy and adding them to your desktop environment where they'll give you pleasure each time the display changes.

Another Snowglobe by Chance

Now if this snowglobe creation application would work as it should, that would be fun. However, despite the choice of three pre-made versions and the supposed opportunity to make one with a picture of your choice, the only code produced is for the silly reindeer. I did manage to create one with my picture, but the code is not produced up front so unless you visit my page on the Pyzam site, you could not see it. Another visit to Pyzam after clicking the verification link sent via e-mail and creating a profile (minimal)then creating the snowglobe and clicking get this toy finally saved the toy to my profile. After it is saved, you can go to the my toys section,see the toys you've created (but only the ones made after you set up the profile),and get the code for each toy you've created. I can't tell you how frustrating this process was until I stumbled on it by chance. It was not intuitive for me, anyway. But I finally did have success. This snowglobe has the drifting snow, and you can click on it to shake it like you would a real snowglobe.



Snow Globe Toy & MySpace Layouts at pYzam.com

Image Play - Embossing

I took a poster made in Flickr Toys in Thing 8 and used another free application to create the image above. I want to go back and change the color, but that will wait for another day. The sun's out and it's time to get outside after a very long winter and cold spring. Today one might believe that summer will actually arrive and I intend to get out and enjoy the sun while it's still shining.

Image Generation Possibilities

The same photo as a sketch, charcoal sketch with slight color, and charcoal sketch with more color as generated by the Sporkforge.com image generation utilities.

Image Processing Software

I found some image processing software that allows you to generate an image from your photo to either look like a sketch, a charcoal sketch and several other possibilities, including embossing. This photo of my grandson DJ taken with his dad's cell phone to show me his missing teeth is one I tried with the Charcoal sketch software. It gives kind of cool results. You can add color to it if you like. There are several settings you can adjust to give different results. The company is Sporkforge.com, their image generating utilities.

Library Art

I bumped into a mosaic program that looked intriguing in the course of the 23 Things on a Stick program and had to try it out. The program is small and fairly simple but I thought the results were like impressionist art. I've seen some quilts and quilting books that use somewhat the same technique.

The mosaics are made of thumbnails I added to my Librarything account. I only added seventeen titles, but used them to create a collection. I then used that collection to make mosaics of some of the covers. A few of the results are in the flip book above.

The program is called Andreamosaic. It's just a small download. Don't forget to grab the manual too if you want to try it out. I didn't download the picture collection, but might go back and get it after finding the results so pleasing. I'd think the more images the better the result.

I have no earthly idea what you'd actually do with the results, but they are a thing of beauty! You really need to view them full screen on your computer to get the best experience of your art.

Thing 5 - More Fun with Flickr

I've been playing with some of the photo sharing and mashup features of Flickr as I have gone along. I really like the ease of use of jd's Flickr Toys at Big Huge Labs:

I made a jigsaw of a beautiful fireworks photo I found at either Pastynet or at Quietlywild.

I made a trading card of my beautiful deceased Miss Kitty, who was a very special cat.

The postage stamp of my grandson reading was done with Framer. A similar stamp was made after using Picnik to edit a scan of an award I got from the Library of Michigan at a Rural Library Conference in 1995, but using another Flickr application.

I tried a Warholizer of Miss Kitty from the same photo as I used on the trading card, but there just was not enough contrast in the photo. I suppose I could edit this post and include it to show how it turned out. The image is saved on another computer. I'll try to remember to add it later.

I made a slide show of a small selection of photos of UP photographer extraordinaire Dan Urbanski since they are posted in a large collection of his work available online and put a link to it in a favorite things element of the blog . Not really sure of the copyright implications of this, but since they are freely available online and I used just a few and compiled them into a slide show for entertainment, not profit, and credited his work, I would hope it could be construed as sharing them, the same as his website "Quietlywild.com" does. And it seemed fitting to put a link to my niece Sara's music with it since Sara worked for Dan at his photography studio and is in many of the photos at "Quietlywild".

There are so many assorted types of applications that can be used with Flickr and the list is growing, so it seems like a place to come often and check out what's there and how it works. I did enjoy the Tagman game (like Hangman) but tied to tags in Flickr. It could be addicting like playing Solitaire in Windows is, at least for someone who likes words and spelling. Also liked the postcard viewer where I put in "Lake Superior" as the tag and got many beautiful images from Flickr.

So many things to try, so little time to play with them! I can think of many ways to use these features to promote a library in colorful ways in print and online. Even libraries with small budgets can afford to use these tools as most of them are free. Brochures that look professional could be printed inexpensively on existing library equipment for the small cost of supplies.

Thing 4 - Flickr

After viewing the Common Craft video,I finally broke down and created a Flickr account. It is a concern that some disaster might occur and precious photos might be lost. With the ability to store some of them free, keep them private if you wish, and add tags to find them more easily, I thought "Why not". It helped that I already had a Yahoo account and didn't have to keep track of yet another login and password. I uploaded a few pictures to the account just to see how it worked and will do more later. I tagged the photos and divided them into sets. There's a limit of three sets with the free account so you need to be thoughtful about creating them.

I had previously explored the site and have been playing with some of the fun Flickr things as a reward to myself after reading blogs. (I needed to know how some of the tools worked so that I could answer questions about how to do some of the things that others were having problems with.)

I checked out all the highlights in Thing 4. Loved the use of the "add a note" feature in libraries! Hours could be spent exploring the LC collections, comments and tags if ever there was the time.

I finally remembered to bring my camera to work (my kids who got me the camera so I would have something small to carry with me and catch those "aha" photo opportunities would like it if I carried it with me all the time as they intended, but it's a hard habit to adopt. Ever since I missed the opportunity of capturing the fall migration of swans (seemed to be a hundred or more) in the bay near Ashland I 've been taking it when I travel.) Since I don't have a "library" per se, I took a picture of our office nameplate and an award I won while a public librarian in Michigan. I uploaded the pictures to Flickr and attempted to add them to this post. Only it's not happening today. Google has some issues with Blogger currently and uploading photos is one of them. So I saved my draft to try again Saturday with no more success than Friday night. On Saturday posts were readable but not able to post when I checked. Since I am getting the same message today (Sunday) after clearing my cache, Google's Blogger is apparently still having issues. I guess I won't finish this thing today, at least not with photos from Flickr. Uploading from my computer didn't work either so I'll wait and try again when their problems are resolved. But I will publish the post and try to edit it to add pictures at a later time.