CollageIt 1.9.5

Overview

CollageIt will help you create photo collages with very little effort. It can create collages with up to 200 photos, which you can preview in real time and decide if you want to keep them as they are or edit them. There are only three steps you need to go through in order to create a collage: add the photos, adjust settings and preview the collage, and finally save the project as an image file like BMP, JPEG, PNG or GIF.

Installation

Installation will not take more than a few minutes to complete. It has very few steps and requires no configurations whatsoever. It is also clean from any kind of viruses and malware, plus it doesn’t include any additional 3^rd party software. When installation is over you will be prompted to run the program and view the welcome page in your browser.

The supported operating systems are Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and Mac OS X.

Interface

When you launch CollageIt, the window that will open will ask you to pick a template for your project. There are 15 different templates you can choose from. After choosing one a new window will open that is split in 3 areas. In the first one you add the photos you want to include in the collage. In the middle one you drag and drop the photos you added in the empty boxes and position them in any way you want. The third are is about adjusting settings like how many photos you want in the current collage, the margin and space between them, their rotation or frame color. There a few buttons below with various functions, such as shuffling the photos in the collage or adding a background image.

Pros

Unlike some other programs with similar purpose, this one is very easy to use. You don’t have to fiddle around with countless options in order to make a simple collage, with CollageIt the only thing you have to do is pick a template, add your photos, make any adjustments in the appearance of the collage if you wish and you’re done. You can save your work as JPG, TIFF, PNG, BMP, GIF, PDF or PSD. Apart from saving it in your computer you can also set it as your wallpaper, send it via email, upload it to Flickr or share it on Facebook.

Cons

This is not exactly a free product, since there are a few restrictions which to remove you must upgrade to CollageIt Pro (shareware). Until you do a watermark will be added in each collage, you won’t have the ability to crop photos in it and its size limit will be 2000x2000 pixels.

When you add a photo in the preview area, there is no option to remove it, but you can only change its place. To remove it from the collage you must either delete all the photos by clicking on the “clear” button, or start reducing the number of photos in the collage until this photo has been removed.

Alternatives

Shape Collage is a free alternative to CollageIt that will help you create collages in less than a few minutes. Using the photos you selected, it will automatically form different shapes in the collage for fantastic results. Photovisi is a free and online tool for creating collages quickly. It has many default templates to use and the only thing you have to do is pick one and then add the desired photos. The result can be downloaded when it’s finished.

Conclusion

CollageIt is a simple program that intends to make collages easy and fast, rather than stunning and unique. It is not recommended for professional use but it is suitable for common situations.