Lomography

Tipster of the Week: The New Age of Wall Merging
written by scapegoat on June 7th, 2009 , 14 comments (14 votes)

A Glorious Folly by d_i_hunter

While the new lomography.com has lots of kick-ass new features and fuctionality (with plenty more to come), one thing that lots of people are missing is the ability to ‘wall merge’. I’ve devised a method that creates something similar to keep us going.

Be warned: this tip is very time consuming and should only be attempted if you enjoy doing puzzles. Oh, and you’ll need Photoshop (or similar) and a fairly powerful computer. A large monitor helps too…

Still interested? Then let’s begin.

Step 1. Choose your image. It will make it easier if the image has lots of detail and different colours. Select one that has an interesting strip through the middle as you won’t need the full height. Hmm… in fact, this technique would be great for Horizon pictures!

Step 2. Using Photoshop, resize (and resample*) your picture to 7,680 pixels wide and whatever depth to keep the proportions correct. *I wouldn’t normally recommend digitally resampling an image, but we’ll only be looking at thumbnail sizes, so it’s OK.

Step 3. Still in PS ‘slice’ your image 10 slices across and down, and save them all to the same folder (if you can use a Horizon shot, you’ll only need to divide into 6 slices down). Now select the best 10 column by 6 row section and upload them in the lab.

Step 4. Right, it becomes a puzzle now! Create a new album with these 60 slices… and then you have to put them in the correct order. What makes this complicated is that when you view an album in your home it is shown in a 10 × 6 grid, but when you view it in the lab it is shown in a 6 × 10 grid. So you have to build your merge in a staggered way – not as easy as you’d hope. This is why it helps to use a picture that has lots of detail. The first time I tried this I used a picture that was mostly sky – I had to give up before it drove me mad!

Step 5. Publish the album. Although the key image in album cover view won’t look like much, when you view the wall of pictures you’ll be treated to a huge merged image with some cool tech-looking white keylines dividing it up.

Was it worth the effort? Only you can decide…

Let’s hope there’s an automatic merge function built into the website soon! By the way, with a slight adaptation this technique can be used to make one big picture from your album covers – but the effect only works as long as you don’t add any new albums…