AKVIS Chameleon can help you create photo collages without much effort. The program has a straightforward interface. Luckily, everything becomes quite easy if you follow the order of the buttons in the toolbar, which responds to its workflow. It has two tabs that let you see the image before and after the changes.
The steps to create a collage are easy to follow. First, you should import the desired background and foreground images. Unfortunately, only the most common picture formats are allowed. Then, you need to place the foreground image exactly where you want it, and it is a great help to modify its opacity level. Next, you can select the region of the image you want to keep. Luckily, the program supports three modes. In Montage mode, the two images are combined by fading away the irrelevant parts of the foreground picture. If you pick Chameleon mode, the inserted object is adjusted to the target color range and its borders are smoothed. The Blend mode consists in making the inserted image semi-transparent, so it appears dissolved in the background. Finally, in Emersion mode, the pasted image is not kept in the foreground, instead, it is embedded into the background.
The program also has some post-processing tools. These include the Smudge tool, which smooths the edges of the foreground fragment by mixing colors. Likewise, you can use the Blur tool to reduce the sharpness of the edges. Finally, there is History Brush, a tool that restores the original background or reverses the changes made in post-processing. When you are done, the edited image can be saved to disk or shared on various cloud services.
All in all, AKVIS Chameleon is probably the best tool to create photo collages when you do not have much experience as it helps you skip complex selection procedures. However, it has some limitations as to the ways you can select the fragment to keep, should you desire to use other methods. The product is available in various licenses, Home, Home Deluxe and Business, and can be installed as a standalone or a plugin in other photo editors. Gladly, any of these editions can be evaluated for a limited period.
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