Messages

1

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Shape Collage - Free Automatic Photo Collage Maker

« on: March 11, 2009, 11:20 AM »

I've figured out the problem with PSD files on GIMP and the fix will appear in the next version of Shape Collage.  The code for opening PSD files was completely rewritten in version 2.5 of GIMP, and when I originally developed the PSD code for Shape Collage, I was testing it on version 2.4.  The new code is picker and I had to adjust some of the padding bits to get it to work.

So, until I release the next version, you will have to use Photoshop or GIMP version 2.4.7 or earlier if you want to open the collages in PSD format.

Thanks for helping me with this bug!

2

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Shape Collage - Free Automatic Photo Collage Maker

« on: March 08, 2009, 01:59 AM »

Hmm... I also got the same error message in GIMP, but the file opened up fine in Photoshop.  The same compression mode is used for all PSD files, so I'm not sure why some of the PSD files will give an error and others won't.  I'll look into this further.

3

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Shape Collage - Free Automatic Photo Collage Maker

« on: March 05, 2009, 07:38 PM »

I am able to open the PSD files generated from Shape Collage in GIMP.  I believe that GIMP and Photoshop have a file size limit (2GB if I recall correctly) and there is also a limit on the resolution (something like 20,000 pixels in either of the dimensions).  Both programs will fail to open PSD files that exceed these limits.  If you send me your PSD file, I can take a look, but it should be in a format that GIMP can open.

4

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Shape Collage - Free Automatic Photo Collage Maker

« on: March 04, 2009, 03:31 PM »

I've reattached the images in lower resolution.  Shape Collage is capable of creating very high resolution images suitable for being printed out in large poster format.

5

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Shape Collage - Free Automatic Photo Collage Maker

« on: March 04, 2009, 03:02 PM »

Hi,

I'd like to announce a (donationware) program I wrote called Shape Collage that automatically creates photo collages in different shapes, like a heart, cat, or in the shape of a word, very quickly and easily.  I have attached two example collages to this post.  One is 200 photos of my cat in the shape of a heart, and the other is Cody created with 161 images that I grabbed from the Donation Coder website (Shape Collage can grab photos directly from websites).  I made each of those in less than a minute.

This is the project website (includes a lot of examples, screenshots, link to the download, etc.):
http://www.vincentcheung.ca/shapecollage/



I like to make collages to summarize albums of photos that I have so I can post it on my blog, use as my desktop wallpaper, use for scrap booking projects, etc.  I was never satisfied with the collages created using Picasa and other programs because the photos are just randomly placed in the collage, the photos do not optimally cover the area of the collage, and many of the photos are covered up by other photos.  I used to use Photoshop to manually create the collages, but this would take forever.  So, I created a program that automatically creates photo collages and attempts to optimally place the photos in the collage using a machine learning algorithm that I developed.  I then realized that my program was not restricted to merely creating rectangular collages like every other collage making software or website, and so, Shape Collage was born.

I enjoy developing and using Shape Collage and I want others to be able to easily create their own collages.  You can save the collages in JPEG, PNG, or even Photoshop PSD format so that you can edit the collage yourself afterwards.  It's fast and free with no viruses, ads, etc. and available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

I hope you like it!


Vincent