Creating collage with set outline

[IamSam]

Yes, I never thought of Pike as being an invasive species to Alaska. What's the extent of it's infringement? They are very aggressive and veracious feeders that can threaten any native species.

 

[ajmorin]

Pike are actually native to the interior and parts of western Alaska, but they were introduced illegally into lakes in South Central Alaska (around Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula) in the 50s. The food chain in the lakes is much less complex there, so they have no real predators and the salmon have not evolved to cope with the feeding habits of the pike.

 

[ajmorin]

Quick disclosure.
I just want you to know that I've enjoyed making a collage along with you in this thread. Not that I believe that you're thinking this, but I'm certainly not trying to show you up! All I want to do is demonstrate techniques and offer you some ideas and I like to offer up visual imagery to support the written.

Blurring the BG a little also helps the outline to stand out as well.

View attachment 45538

What do you use to blur the BG? My poster is looking pretty busy right now, and I'd like to tone down some of the distractions.

 

[ajmorin]

Here's a low quality rough draft of my poster. Feel free to send any comments and thoughts my way. I know it's pretty dense and crowded as is, and I'm not afraid of changing it. I'm just trying to make it relevant to people passing through the area. It is going to be a large poster, ~44"H x 33"W.View attachment Alaska ANS Poster low.pdf

 

[dv8_fx]

Looks excellent. What I can suggest is to add a layer with a white fill between the background and the map layers. I don't know whether you have adjustment layers within the map groups but if there are, it may be better to merge the map layers.

Play with the opacity of the white layer- set it at the lowest opacity that looks good enough to blur your background the way you like. You can also try setting the layer mode to Screen.