Collages are a great way to show off a collection of related photographs and they are great as social shares or as a print framed on your wall. Use Photo Collage free online collage maker.
If you have a single photo, it has to be almost perfect to make an impression and if there is anything not quite right about the composition, lighting, exposure, saturation and so on, it looks poor. It is hard to take a perfect photo unless you are an expert with a camera or Photoshop.
A collage is different and often the whole is more than the parts. Individually, photos may not be that great, but when they are seen as a collection of images in a collage or even as small photos pinned to a board, they can represent a moment in time, like a birthday party, holiday, a group of friends, pets, places and so on. No one image is perfect, but the collection can be important to you and can bring back memories.
There are many collage maker programs for the PC, Mac and phones, and we are spoilt for choice. Here is one that runs in a web browser so there is no software to install. This means that it works on a Windows PC, Apple Mac and Linux computers. It also works on iPhone and Android phone, and tablets too.
Photo Collage website is free and works everywhere and I created collages on a Windows PC and on an iPhone. The screenshots here are from a Windows PC, but you can do this on any device with an up to date browser. Here is one I made from some of my cat photos. The intro image for this article at the top of the page is a collage I made from photos of laptop computers, iPhone and iPad.
1 Photo Collage online
Open a browser window and go to www.photocollage.com to make your photo collage. There is no registration, no accounts, no cost, and it just works. Don’t let the Download Photo Editor Now ad banner fool you. Ignore it. In fact, it is useful to scroll the page up to hide the ad and to also close that Create online photo collages box.
See the checkerboard below? Drag photos from your computer’s drive and drop them on it to begin. The minimum number needed is three, but you can add up to 20. If you do this on a phone or tablet, tap the first plus button in the toolbar and there is the option to select a photo taken earlier or to use the camera and take a new photo now.
2 Edit the photos
Photos are dumped one on top of the other in the workspace, but thumbnails down the right margin enable you to select images and they can be dragged up or down to rearrange the order or to bring one to the top.
Click a photo and another toolbar appears with some basic functions. Click More at the right hand side to access a menu with useful functions like filters to adjust the saturation, brightness, contracts and apply a few color effects, like sepia.
It is useful to clone an image and try out effects. If you like them, delete the original, but if you don’t, delete the clone. It is not the best photo editor and it is better to use one on your computer, but it is ok and you can make basic adjustments.
3 Choose a template
Click the Template button and a collection of collage templates is shown. A small number on each one shows how many photos are needed for it, in case it is not obvious. Click a template and it is applied to the photos. If you don’t like it, you can return here and select a different template.
4 Customize the collage
The photos are automatically dropped into the collage template, but if they are not in the places you want, they can be swapped around. Images can be rotated and the order changed to bring overlapping photos to the front or move them to the back. Photos can be dragged or moved with the toolbar buttons and the border shape, size and colour can be selected.
5 Save or print
There are two save options and collages can be saved in SD or HD. HD seems to default to 4,000 x 3,000 pixels and SD to 1,200 x 900. These are 4:3 sizes, but several more preset sizes are available and you can choose your own. You can always save in HD and then shrink it if you want it smaller.
There is also an option to share the collage online on the usual social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. The print option has a selection of paper sizes in portrait and landscape modes.
Some parts of the collage may be empty, so a background image can be selected here.
Summing up
There are better applications for the computer for creating collages than this, but many have limited functions for free and your computer can suffer from software bloat if you install too much software. If your collage needs are basic, Photo Collage website could be all you need to create great images for social shares, use on websites and prints. I created the intro image for this article for example.
Photo Collage isn’t perfect, but for a free tool that runs in a web browser, it is pretty good.
More photo editing tips and tools:
- Create videos from clips and photos with FlexClip online editor
- Enlarge photos without losing quality with a brilliant utility
- Best apps to view and edit exif data in photos on the iPhone
- How to browse photos using Windows Explorer views and QuickLook
- Top photo editing tools for creating images for blogs, sites, social shares
