How to Create a Photo Montage With Microsoft Publisher

Microsoft Publisher is an easy-to-use, template-driven software program that allows the user to create a variety of web and printed documents. It is very easy to use templates to create a variety of photo montages. You can download free templates from Microsoft for hundreds of different documents. The software has a great browse feature allowing you to view templates before downloading. They have templates for business, birthday parties, vacations, and even tools to market your house for sale. For the example in this article we will create a photo montage from scratch, but the techniques explained also apply to using templates.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Microsoft Publisher
• Images in JPEG format

1. Open Blank Page Open a blank page in publisher. Decide if you want to use a horizontal or vertical format. If you are using a template you should click on publication designs to select your template or import one from Microsoft.
2. Place Key Picture In this case we will make a simple montage of five photographs. Decide which image you want to use as the key image and place that image first. Think of the Rule of Thirds and how you want the viewer to see the montage. Plan how the images will be placed on the page. The key image is the one you want the viewer to see first and come back to after viewing all the images.
3. Size and Position Images Place and size the images on the page. Simply grab the image handles to resize the image and to move the images on the page. The program automatically puts the image to the front. After you have sized and placed all the images, select the center image and choose ARRANGE/ORDER/BRING TO FRONT. This will assure that the center key image overlaps the corners of the other images.
4. Create Borders Select an image and on the picture tool bar select a border and border color to apply to the image. In this case I made all the borders the same color and thickness. You may choose to have the center picture with a thicker or different color border. Make sure your border colors are compatible with the color of the background. There are many choices so take your time in selecting border thickness and color. Don’t be afraid to experiment and preview.
5. Add a Background Add a background. Choose FORMAT/BACKGROUND to open the background pallet. Change the color of the backgrounds by selecting “more colors” and you can select different backgrounds by clicking “more backgrounds." Once you click on a patch it will be displayed in the image window.
6. Add Text Try adding some text by inserting a text box and selecting font, color and style from the appropriate menu. You can also insert Microsoft “Word Art” text for your headers and text blocks.
7. Save or Print Save the final montage as a publisher file which can be printed to a variety of devices. You can also export the image to an existing website or simply save it as a JPEG to be used in a variety of additional applications.

Tips & Warnings

• There are a variety of montage templates to use that come with Publisher or can be downloaded for free use.
• Try making your own templates with the wide variety of color, texture and background tools that come with Publisher.
• This is a great way to display family pictures without having to invest in precut photo mattes.