Our modern technology lets us create stunning modern art — often in ways we couldn’t have imagined just a few decades ago, thanks to many digital revolutions. For instance, combining digital photos into unique composite images is easier than ever. With these creations, you can create something that can elevate your portfolio or social media profiles.
Making such a digital collage is easy because you have endless online resources and photos. However, if you want to use your photos, they may need to be digitized first.
How To Digitize Old Photos
You can choose between plenty of options when digitizing old photos to create stunning modern art.
For starters, you can invest in a professional photo scanner. With this hardware, you can quickly scan any photos you need for your art — or digitize old family albums, for instance. However, this only makes sense if you plan on scanning many photos regularly. Otherwise, buying an entire scanner yourself isn’t cost-effective.
The lower-end scanners may not produce the high image quality you need for your art, and the higher-end options are simply too pricey. They often cost upwards of $200.
On the other hand, you can scan photos with your smartphone. There are tons of apps for this, including Google’s PhotoScan. However, this only makes sense if you have the latest smartphone with a super-advanced camera. And even then, the process is fiddly and produces inconsistent results.
At the same time, for a more reliable and affordable solution, consider using Capture, a professional digitization service specializing in converting physical photos into high-quality digital files. They handle the entire process, ensuring your photos are digitized with exceptional clarity and detail. Whether preserving family albums or creating digital art, this solution eliminates the hassle of DIY scanning while delivering superior results, making it the perfect choice for high-quality photo digitization.
What Can You Do With Digitized Photos?
Have you converted all the images you need into the proper digital format? Great! Now, you’ll see how much you can achieve with the right combination of images. In truth, a study published in The American Archivist highlights how historians utilize digitized photographs as evidence, demonstrating the profound impact and versatility of digital images in research and storytelling. With the right digital tools, you can create unique graphics that augment or reproduce reality or evoke a fantastical atmosphere.
If you’re getting started with modern art, start small. Perhaps make one photo the background and place a person or another object in front, seamlessly blending them. You’ll get a unique photo without much effort, and it’s great practice for more complex art.
On the other end of the difficulty spectrum, you have fantastical compositions that no longer resemble the real world but better depict your artistic expression. Try playing with fantasy or sci-fi backgrounds and integrating yourself (or someone else) into them. Also, add elements of other photos in appropriate spots as little nuggets of surrealism.
Telling A Story
Of course, this doesn’t have to be a purely aesthetic exercise. Instead of only trying to wow people with visuals, you can use a series of composites to create stunning modern art that tells a story.
In truth, composite photography is how we make most movie posters and other promotional material nowadays. It’s much harder to get a bunch of A-list movie stars together in one room for long enough to create all the promo art you need, so they take their photos separately, and pros stitch them together seamlessly.
You can do the same thing with your art — or even create sequences of events by combining similar photos in different ways.
If you have enough similar photos, you can create a rudimentary animation or at least an effect that resembles one.
Create Stunning Modern Art: Composite Image Techniques
We’ve given you a few examples of ways to use digitized photos to create art and unlock your creativity. Now, let’s examine some practical techniques for doing just that.
The first technique you’ll likely learn is creating a panorama, the simplest way to create art from two or more photos. You simply take two scenic photos and stitch them together at appropriate “seams.”
You can also combine different photos of the same object for a more interesting effect. On the one hand, you could do that to achieve an interesting visual effect. On the other hand, photographers sometimes do this to show greater detail.
Enhancing Details & Quality
When it comes to small, intricate objects — like tiny computer parts or insects — you often have to deal with a shallow depth of field. Consequently, you can only focus on specific object parts in a single photo.
If you want to create a stunning, hyper-detailed image of something small, you can take many photos focusing on different aspects of the object. Then, you can use software to overlay the images on top of one another to show the sharpest representation of every small part.
Sometimes, you can achieve an interesting effect not by adding another element — but by removing an existing one. Imagine having one epic scenic shot of a mountain range or a river, but a pesky passer-by has ruined it by straddling through. On the other hand, you may have another inferior shot that shows the same landscape — but without the passer-by.
With some practice, you can easily combine the two photos to mask the unwanted elements and create the perfect image that makes a big impact.
Which Tools Should I Use?
With modern art, the tools you’d need are usually software tools — not counting the camera you used to take the initial materials.
To create montages, you’ll need some photo editing software. Now, the product you’ll choose depends on your experience and expertise. Professionals use things like Corel and Photoshop, but these tools may be too complex for a beginner — not to mention too pricey.
For starters, try a free tool like Gimp before deciding to invest in something more robust. Plus, you can achieve many basic effects we’ve described here with a simpler smartphone app — like Adobe Lightroom.
Wrapping Up
If you want to use digitized photos to create stunning modern art, the world is your oyster — there are more options than ever before. Scan the images properly or have a professional service do it for you. Having high-quality images is essential, after all.
