OT - but help tell me how to make a coin collage

Geoman

I need help. I want to make a nice collage of coins overlapping each other for my website. But I am having a little trouble. Whenever I overlay one image on another, you see the white border that I cropped out. See this first picture for what I am talking about:


You see the white area of the Liberty Nickel hiding some of the Buffalo nickel. Instead, I want the coins to overlay like this:


I am using Adobe Photoshop 7.0. Can anyone tell me how to solve this? Thanks!!!!

FullHorn

Use the eraser tool and erase the white part of the top image or use the magnetic lasso to crop each coin

ms70

Start off with a new blank image. Then go to the pics of the coins you want.

Try using the circular selection tool (the one that drags a dotted circle to the size you want) and encircle the coin, then go to
the tool bar on top, click EDIT, then click COPY.

Go to the new image that will be the collage, then go to EDIT, then click PASTE. You should then have round figures of a coin
each time you do that & you can move them around at will.

ClarkOfKent

Another good way to get rid of large like-color areas is to use the Magic Wand tool. If you set the Tolerance low, say 16 or lower, you should be able to click on and select only the white areas. The, you can delete the white.

Check "Contiguous" if you only want to select white areas that are connected to where you click. Otherwise, you could accicently select an area on a coin that is white.

Also, check "Anti-Aliased" if you want to smooth the edges that you cut out.

BTW, are you using separate Layers for each coin in the collage?

Geoman

Thanks guys!!!

shylock

For the type of graphics you're doing I'd go with the Elliptical tool MS70 mentioned for a cleaner look. When you overlap coins like that any excess slab remaining on the coin shows up, and sometimes the magic wand leaves a little behind.

One tip I'd add is after choosing the Elliptical tool, choose "Fixed Aspect Ratio" in the Style box on top. This will ensure perfectly round circles. I'd also recommend first cropping the coins as close as possible with the Rectangular tool in Fixed Aspect, making a perfect square. It makes using the Ellipse option much easier.

stujoe

For these wallpapers I used an old version of MS Picture It.

Wallpaper

It is very simple using that program but I don't know if you have anything like that around. Some of those graphics programs are way too complicated for me to figure out.

ms70

stujoe- Nice work!

Geoman

Thanks again all. All of the suggestions were helpful. Great tips!!! I think I am starting to get it now. All I need now is some practice, now that I know the procedure. Here is what I did tonight.

stujoe

Geoman, You have certainly got the hang of it. Good work.

MS70, thanks but it is all in the ease of the program as I have zero artistic ability. I used the same program to make the cut outs like my icon.