Software
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 Photo
Montage, version 1, was used to create the cover of the May, 1999 issue
of Basically, you pick a “main” digital photo (you can scan it or import it from a digital camera — or get it off the Internet). This will be the subject of the montage. When you click the montage button, Photo Montage will chose among its over 20,000 “micro-image” stock of digital images to “paint” the image you selected into a photo montage. In other words, if you picked someone’s face, the program would select micro-images that match the flesh tones, the eye brows, the hair color, the eyes, the clothing color and the background. When you see it building the montage and then view the resulting picture, you can’t help but say, “Whoa.” Here is a step-by-step procedure for creating a montage using the programs micro-images. The Main Screen is where you bring your own photo, the “main” photo that you want to montage, into the program. You can edit a photo but the tools are limited to cropping, brightness and contrast controls. If you are satisfied with your “main” photo, just click on the Build Montage button. The Build Screen opens which gives you several montage options. You can simply use the programs micro-images to build your montage or, if you have built a collection of your own photo images, you can select to build a montage from a combination of your own collection and the images that are included in the program. You can vary the image size, control the micro-images repetition, add a caption to the montage and check the box that allows the program to use color variation with the micro-images to match the hues of the “main” photo. After clicking the Okay Button, the program returns to the Main Screen and starts building the montage After the montage is built, you can click on the Detail Button to zoom in on the montage. That’s the part of the program that’s about as easy as stepping off a curb. If you want a challenge and are a bit of a masochist, then you might want to build a digital photo collection of your own photos to use for a montage. The December cover was constructed from Photo Montage 2000 using over 600 photos that I compiled using Corel’s Gallery 1,000,000 (which has thousands of photos along with a gazillion clipart images) and a number of old Christmas card images that I scanned. In Gallery 1,000,000, I picked holiday photos along with winter sports activities. To increase the number of photos, I used numerous filters in Corel PhotoPaint 9 to modify the original photo into new images. The montage photo itself was scanned from an old Christmas card. There are several neat improvements to this new version of PhotoMontage. For instance, it will automatically adjust the color of each micro-image to perfectly match the original color of your main photo. In fact, if you wanted to create a montage of a single image (your granddaughter for instance), PhotoMontage will repeat and adjust the color of that single image to render your final masterpiece. If you have a little leaguer in the family, you can buy an additional micro-image sports collection from ArcSoft to montage sports images to create that little leaguer’s photo montage. Other collections available are nature, animals, and more. Once you create your montage masterpiece, you can print it out on your color printer or save it as a graphic file and send it to your friends as an e-mail attachment — but if you want to really impress someone, let ArcSoft make a poster of your montage (for a fee). Just click on the “Cool Stuff” button on the Main screen to launch the Special PhotoMontage Services screen. The SRP for PhotoMontage is a modest $39.95 although you may be able to find it discounted at local computer stores. Numerous photo enhancement programs were available to be downloaded for trial on ArcSoft’s website. System requirements
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