1) To transfer your photos for your Pop Art portrait
1) Read our advice closely before choosing your photos In order for our graphic artist to produce a beautiful pop art portrait, you need to start with the right photo. Click on the following link to read our advice.
2) Send digital photos by e-mail The easiest thing to do is to send your digital photos by e-mail to the following address: contact@your-portrait.co.uk Take care not to exceed 10 Mb per e-mail. If you think that you will exceed this amount, send several e-mails in order to be certain that we receive your photos. You can choose to send them to us before placing the order. We will tell you if they are suitable for a successful pop art portrait.
3) Send paper photos by post If you do not have good quality digital photos, you can send us your photos by post. Our postal address is: PIXTORY, 83 avenue de la pointe rouge, F-13008 Marseille, FRANCE.
If you prepare your photos using our instructions, your mosaic will be all the more successful (however, this is an option).
If you are uncomfortable with new technologies, vortreportrait.fr uses very simple steps to explain how to prepare your souvenir photos and send them over the Internet. If you are finding it difficult, don't panic, just give us a call :)
Follow the guide, off we go!
I - Gather together as many photos as possible > the more photos you send us, the better the mosaic will be because there will be fewer repetitions and, above all, a greater choice of colours and shapes. You will need a minimum of 200 and a maximum of 1,000.
- Explore hard disks, telephones, yours and those of your friends, in your hunt for pictures.
- Scan (optional) old photos from your family albums (the poorer quality is not a problem because the pictures that will make up the mosaic will be very small: about 1cm high). Often scanners offer “scan for screen or scan for web”. Choose .jpg format. Technical information for confirmed users: use a resolution of 72dpi and save in .jpg 50/100 or 5/12 quality. Do not forget to crop the images scanned to avoid leaving a white border (e.g. if you scan a photo on an A4 surface, define the scanning area in order not to scan the entire A4 page).
- Gather together all these pictures in a single folder which you will name “order –your name --size of your mosaic-”, for example “order jouve 70100”.
II - Prepare your photos with Picasa (on PC) > instructions will soon be available for Mac.
Download “Picasa” > This free software created by Google is very simple and is perfect for managing photos and for simple editing.
- The download address is as follows: http://www.google.co.uk/picasa
- To install the software, click on the downloaded file
- Once the software has been installed, open it
“Picasa” in 9 easy lessons > For each step, you will see a miniature screen shot. Click on it to enlarge it.
1) Import your picture folder
- Click on the “import” button at the top of the window
- Choose “select device” then “folder”
- Identify your folder on your disk and click on “open”
2) Rotating pictures
> Some pictures are taken vertically and you will have to turn them in the right direction in order to avoid some nasty surprises when you receive your mosaic
- You will see the list of pictures on the left of the screen
- To enlarge each picture click on the thumbnail
- Below the large picture, you will see 2 arrows which you can use to rotate the picture
- Rotate each picture as required in order to avoid pictures appearing in the wrong direction
- Click on “Import all” at the bottom
3) Picture manager
- The pictures appear in the Picasa window
- Click on the display menu then on “edit centre”
4) Editing your photos
- Scroll through your photos using the arrows at the top of the page and stop at each vertical photo
- Click on crop
5) Cropping to horizontal format
> The mosaic is made up of horizontal photos, because of this you will have to crop vertical photos to turn them into horizontal photos
> We recommend that you do this yourself because, in that way, you will be sure of getting the result you are looking for
- Click on the option 13x18
-move the selection frame on the picture to obtain the desired framing
- Click on “apply” on the left
- When you have done this to all the vertical photos, click on the “tuning” tab
6) Settings
> The colours in some pictures are too saturated or not saturated enough, others are too dark or too light... Adjusting the colours of your photos is the best way to obtain an even more successful mosaic
- Take a quick look at each picture as you scroll through them using the arrows at the top
- Alter the different cursors in order to obtain the desired colour and lighting
- When you have finished, click on the “Back to library” button on the left
7) Converting to sepia or to black & white (optional)
> It is possible to have a black & white or sepia mosaic
- Select all the pictures by clicking on a picture and pressing “Ctrl A”
- Go to the “picture” menu and “batch edit” then “sepia” or “black and white”
- The colour change will be applied to all the photos (this may take a little time, so be patient)
- When you have finished, click just above the picture on “Save changes”
8) Exporting photos
> To obtain much smaller photos which do not take so long to send, receive and process
- Click on the bottom right of the window on the “export” button
- Name the folder “order – your name – size of your mosaic-”, for example “order jouve 70100”.
- Select the option “resize to format” and enter 600
- Select “normal” picture quality
- Click on "export"
9) Compressing the folder
> Final step: compress your folder to make it smaller and easier to transfer over the Internet
- Exporting pictures will take time and patience...
- Once the export has finished, Picasa should display the exported folder
- In general, the folder containing your pictures will be in My documents/My pictures/Picasa Export
- Right-click on the folder and select “Send to” “Compressed folder”
- Windows will compress your folder into a .zip folder
I’m sure that you’ve had no problems with these steps! So, don’t lose heart now, all you need to do now is to send your folder to our file server. Follow the guide...
III - Transferring the folder to our file server
Go to our website http://82.237.124.125:8080/1258487996026. Start by creating a folder with your NAME and enter the folder by clicking on it, then click on “transfer my files”. Once the transfer has started, you will have time to drink a coffee or even go out to lunch because it is a long process. Good luck :)
