Hi, how do you make your digital collage backgrounds? What filters and colors do you use? And what is your process of selecting these images?
I'm planning to do one too and I wanted to have some advise
for filtering and colors: it really depends! there are two things to keep in mind, for me: colors and layering. for all of my backgrounds, i generally play with the tone curves of the source image (depends on whatever program you're using) or run it through a gradient map (generally from 1, 2). generally, i either want to 1) soften the colors and reduce the contrast of the image so that my figures and text stand out better 2) mangle it until its just a little unrecognizable at first glance.
looking at the background from one of my sayaka pieces, here's the base image i used (i think it's an old railway map of boston maybe? who cares); i threw it through a gradient map (i think a toned down "arcade carpet" from "ballpit gradients," if we want to get granular), and then added a layer of these heavily-altered railways on top to add some movement and distortion.
for images: most of my images come from the internet archive in some way or another. in general, for backgrounds, i find maps and film photography (this is my favorite spot) to be what i gravitate towards. For the images i layer on top, those tend to depend a lot more on the theme of whatever the piece is; there are a lot of transparent png blogs on here that have fun stuff sometimes, and i get a lot of text from weird old pdfs on the internet archive or digital magazines. old advertisements are also a lot of fun -- i find their tone fun to recontextualize.
for like, my selection process specifically: really, really depends on the piece. i do a lot of collage i don't share on here that dwells on sexual abuse, and the rooted themes there of agency and coercion find themself in pretty much whatever i make, and there's a reason i'm a sayaka miki + asuka langley soryu girl. fork spotted in kitchen. generally, i try to find texts that don't directly engage with the subject i'm thinking of -- doing so feels a little too literal and misses some of the "work with what you have" collage feel. obviously this isn't a hard rule, though. here i wind up talking more about text but texts are images too, so whatever. i generally look for anything that takes an accusatory or authoritative tone -- these are the most fun intents to redirect for me. i get a lot of mileage out of advertisements, obviously, but things like printer manuals and other sort of "helptext" documents are cool.
snippet from a millie unreleased banger with an eviscerated bit of an hp printer setup manual. one can imagine the kind of thing this one is going for. the kind of thing that is normal and boring (ie. printer startup manual) can be recontextualized and trimmed to feel really fucking bad. so it sort of doesn't matter as much what kind of images you're using, but how you use them in concert with other elements to tell a story. nods concisely. all in all it's mostly just like normal collage but on the computer. i'm sure other people do things different but i just sort throw a ton of loose images into my file and work a piece until it feels done. it's important to me personally to build up a library of potential sources, like i have a 10 gig folder of random pngs and pdfs right, but i also think taking a moment mid collage to go look for inspiration is really valuable. shrug!
short answer: spend a few hours on the internet archive, find some shit that resonates with you, and gradient map and tone curve that shit until it looks good. also answered a similar ask on my main a bit ago, maybe helpful but who cares.