Utilizing Photoshop to Create a Growing Baby Collage

The first year of your child’s life goes by quick, and they grow so much in this time. There’s no shortage of keepsake memories, but for a truly unique idea, try out my Baby’s First Year Panoramic Print. The idea is to have a picture taken every week and display the growth and personality in one large, framed poster.

For this project, you will need Adobe Photoshop (or a similar digital photo program that works with layers), a digital camera, and a ruler.

This project will work best if you plan ahead of time. This is a very time consuming project, but well worth it, and the work is spread out over a year’s time.

Step 1) Once a week, take several close-up pictures of your child. We picked Saturday to be the picture day and it worked out well because occasionally we would not get it done and Sunday would be the day of a second chance. It is important that you take pictures just for this project, do not rely on the photos that you might already be taking because you will want the whole body presented into the frame. Be sure to have a ruler placed beside the child, and use this same ruler every week. The idea is to scale all the rulers to the same size later, and therefore your child’s growth should roughly be scaled in the same way. You will also want a very plain background behind your child. Most of the time, I would choose a solid colored blanket that contrasts your child and their clothing. When the time comes to standing up, then a plain wall or door can be used. You will also want to pay attention to the clothing, avoid having your child wear the same clothes consecutively. Try to snap between 5 and 10 pictures for every sitting. To help make things easier, try to find a time when your child’s in a good mood. And be sure to adjust with your child’s progress, as they learn to sit up and stand, have them show off their new skills.

Step 2) Upload your pictures into your home computer. I uploaded all of these pictures into a unique folder for this project and named each file as “Week xx_yy”, xx being the week number and yy is the number of the picture in each week. After you’ve uploaded all your pictures for the week, open them and check on the quality. You will need only one picture for each week, but you will want to be sure that your child fits inside the picture completely, that the ruler can be clearly seen, and you’ll want to be sure that your pictures are not blurry or compromised in any way. Remember that this is a long term project, and one bad week might take away from your finished work. Always keep your original photos untouched so that you can go back to them if you need to.

Step 3) Create a blank canvas that will contain all of your work. For my purposes, I used a height of 11 Ã?¾” and a width of 36″ because I could easily find large frames for this size. If you choose to try a different size, then try to conform to a frame that is easily accessible because a custom frame for this project can get very expensive. The resolution of my file is set high, about 200 pixels per inch, because I wanted the print quality to be of the best quality. The end result of your file size will be very large.

Step 4) Decide on the best picture for the week and drag it into your canvas. Remember that you will want to keep variety into your finished project, so a unique pose might be a better option than a standard smile. When you’ve added your weekly picture into your project, rename that layer for the file name, such a Week 27_05. This will enable you to find the original photo if you’ve made any mistakes. Recent versions of Adobe Photoshop allow you to create folders for your layers and you can utilize this for your benefit as your project grows. I found it easier to manage this project by naming folders Weeks 01-09, Weeks 10-19, Weeks 20-29, Weeks 30-39, Weeks 40-49, Weeks 50-52, and place the photos in the folders accordingly.

Step 5) Prepare each weekly photo by erasing the background, but be sure to keep the ruler. Your work can be made easier for you by purchasing an artist tablet that connects to your computer and enables you to draw or erase with a pen-like feel. Next, improve the brightness and contrast of your layer to maximize it’s quality. In the beginning of your project, it will be best to complete this work as you go along so that you can get a feel for it. Later, you can catch up and work with several weeks at a time. Sometimes this is good because you can get the work done quickly. I would recommend not getting too far behind though, because you won’t want to have 40 weeks of pictures to go through while your child turns three years old.

Step 6) As your weeks begin building up, you can begin scaling down your pictures so that each ruler fits nicely on top of each other. If you have problems getting the ruler together, you can fade the top picture so that you can see both images clearly. I can’t imagine that your photos will ever need to be scaled to a larger size. Try to imagine each of your images side by side, and eventually your images will need to become smaller in order to fit properly. After your images are scaled together, place them close together and link them. After you’ve scaled several weeks together, then you can begin erasing the rulers from the images. Be sure to always keep one ruler available from the images that have been scaled down to the same size so that you’ll have a reference point.

Step 7) You’ll keep taking pictures, uploading them into your computer, dragging your favorite into your project, erasing the background, and scaling it to the other images. I warned you that this is time consuming.

Step 8) As your child turns a full year old, you’ll be getting ready to complete your project. I’ve had to split the pictures into two rows, but maybe you can find an order that can work for you better. For the most part, I have the most recent week overlapping the previous week slightly, but occasionally you’ll need to adjust the order for the circumstance.

Step 9) As you’re putting together your photos, you’ll want to think about the background. You’ll probably want to begin thinking about this by week 30 because you’ll want plenty of time to make adjustments. I’ve come to realize that a simpler background and titles will keep the focus on the star of the project. I’ve played with several nice photographs for the background and settled on the flowers. Because I’ve had to stretch the background photograph to a great length, and because I wanted my child to be the most important part of the project, I’ve faded the background image to about 50%. Be sure to experiment and find what works for you. You can add a title or captions, but remember that this project will be looked at for years to come, so you’ll want to keep things simple. For my purposes, I only added my daughter’s name, the range of dates for the photos, and my signature.

Step 10) Do you have everything just how you want it? Congratulations! The time has come to prepare your project for printing. You’ll want to save a finished copy of your project as a TIFF file. This will ensure the best quality possible, especially for any titles or text that you’ve added, and most printers will accept this format. There are plenty of places that can print your project as one whole piece, so I’d recommend looking around. The place that I used and I would highly recommend is through www.epingo.com. It was as simple as transferring the file online and waiting for the final results. Be sure to calculate how many posters you’ll need and order them all at once. Often you can receive discounts for multiple orders, making this an affordable and unique gift for the grandparents of the family. ePingo was able to ship my finished results to five different addresses, saving me the time and effort of mailing them out myself.

If I’ve left anything out, or if you have any questions, you can contact me and I’d be glad to help. If everything goes well for you, I would love to see a sample of your finished work.

This project took me:
about 26 Hours > An average of �½ hour per week taking pictures.
about 52 Hours > An average of an hour for preparing each picture.
about 20 Hours > Making final adjustments, sizing to fit, creating the background, and so on.

This project took a total of 80 to 120 hours to reach completion, but this was also over a 14 month time-span and the finished result is a great souvenir that lasts forever (your original files serve as a “negative” so you can reprint the project if you should ever need more).

This project cost me:
about $15 for the frame, I would recommend purchasing the frame at a craft store like Michael’s when they have a large sale for what you’re looking for.

about $20 for each print, and this included shipping to the addresses I wanted them sent to.

Hopefully everything goes well for you, good luck!