12 on the 12th: Collage Tutorial

Sunday is the 12th and again time for our monthly 12 photos on the 12th of the month.  I have been sharing mine as a collage and some of you have asked about how I make them.  Below is a short tutorial.  That said, many others online just share them one at a time on their instagram or facebooks feeds so a collage is definitely not required to play along.  If you do play along, please share with me as I'd love to see your "day".

My process: I begin by having the downloadable version of Picasa on my computer. (It is available here)

1. During the day, I take a photos of a variety of things.  I usually end up with maybe 25ish usable photos, some of which are repeats.  Some months I take all or most of them on my phone and other months on my "big" camera.  
2. Regardless of how I take them, at the end of the day I load them onto my laptop.  
• For pictures on my camera, I import them into Picasa by inserting my SD card into my computer.  I then open Picasa, select the "import" button at the top of the screen, select the drive and photos I want to add, and at the bottom of the screen select which folder Iwant them saved to.  I choose to save my photos by month so this month's will go into my "August 2012" folder.  
• For pictures taken on a phone: If you are trying to move pictures from your phone to your computer you can email them to yourself.  Then download the image and save them to the folder you instead of the "importing" step.  Alternatively, you can plug your phone into your computer and look for the "drive" just as you would if you were importing off of an SD card or directly from a regular camera.
3. Then, I sort through and start selecting which ones to include in my collage.  When viewing a photo I want to include I push ctrl+h to add the photo to the "tray".  If I change my mind, I can left click the thumbnail image in the trail and select "remove".
4. Once I have 12 photos selected, I select "create" from the top tool bar.  A menu drops down and I then select "picture collage."
5. This will bring up a few options that can be altered to your individual preference.  For this particular project I tend to select "grid" from the top of the settings tab.  This results in a block of 12 equally sized photos. The next choice down the column is "grid spacing".  I like a little white or black between my photos so I slide the bar slightly to the right.
6. When I am satisfied with the options, I select "create collage".  Picasa will save it to its "collage" folder by default.  
7. To upload the collage, you need to know where it is saved on your computer.  To find out, left click on the the collage image and select "locate on disk".  This will give you the path location to help find it when you upload to facebook, twitter, or your blog.

I have heard that the Picasa collage process does not work well on Macs.  Here is a site that has some alternate collage tools for those using other types of computers: http://maketecheasier.com/5-free-tools-to-create-collages-from-your-pictures/2010/02/23

I hope this is helpful and look forward to seeing your pictures!