AJ's Tech Talk: Picture Collage Maker

Picture Collage Maker Review

Picture collages are a creative way to capture moments in time spent with family and friends. Whether it be documenting your children growing up, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, vacations, or just plain fun get-togethers, you can create unique photo collages.

Nowadays you get many desktop and online applications to help you turn your pictures into photo collages. Photovisi, Pixisnap, PicArtia and Picture2Life are examples of some of these applications that can be found online. Most of these photo applications have pre-set or pre-designed templates to choose from and are fairly simple to use, however, they are limited to collages without much flexibility to customize.

I came across a desktop photo application called Picture Collage Maker (PCM) which not only allows you to create amazing photo collages, but also create greeting cards, posters, scrapbooks, calendars and photo books from your pictures. This web page will focus on reviewing PCM and explore its various features.

Picture Collage Maker Features

Picture Collage Maker by Pearl Mountain Soft was developed to make it fun and easy, yet flexible enough to let you be creative. You will find many software applications online, but few of them offer you the flexibility of customizing the pre-designed templates. However, one of the major advantages of this desktop application is that it allows you to create your own, unique templates from scratch.

With PCM you can not only make a variety of collages, but also create greeting cards, posters, scrapbooks, calendars and even photo books. Included in the package, you will find a library of hundreds of templates photo craft projects.

Collages: you can create a variety of collages using hundreds of templates available and personalize them with your photos. You can modify the pre-designed templates or create your own from scratch. You can change the background, add clipart or text, rearrange and resize the picture frames, and so on.

Greeting Cards: you can create different types of greeting cards for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, graduations, new-arrivals, and for celebrating special events or just sending a “thank you” card. Again, you can use the pre-designed templates or create your own. There is a huge library of clipart to help you create your own customized and personalized greeting cards.

Posters & Calendars: You can turn your photos into cool posters using the same templates or just create your own by modifying the pre-designed templates. As well, you can create a variety of unique calendars; full year, by season or by month.

Scrapbooks: are easy to make using this photo application. Similar to creating collages, you can use the pre-designed scrapbooking templates to create personalized scrapbooks or use your creative abilities to customize from scratch.

Photo Books: are a great way to share your pictures with family and friends. You can have several pages as opposed to one sheet of your photos. Essentially, it is a photo album in which you can digitally document memories of events and special occasions. You can share them online as well as print them.

Create Unique Collages

The collage above (on the right-hand side) is an example of a simple one created using PCM Pro. The photo on the left-hand side is a pre-designed template which I used to create my own. As you will notice, I was able to customize and personalize it. I added a background, included an additional photo frame, and changed some of the sizes of the picture frames. The photo to the right is the finished product. There are many pre-designed templates with various themes and backgrounds, so all you have to do is insert your pictures.

Create Personalized Greeting Cards

The graduation congratulatory card above (on the right-hand side) is an example of a greeting card created using Picture Collage Maker Pro. The photo on the left-hand side is a pre-designed template which I used to create the congratulatory card. I didn’t make too many changes in the pre-designed template; I just inserted the photographs in the appropriate picture frames to make the greeting card. If you wish, you can create your own greeting cards from scratch rather than using the pre-designed templates. Take a peek at some of the pre-designed greeting card templates.

Create Cool Posters & Calendars

With Picture Collage Maker, you can create different types of personalized calendars and posters. The summer calendar above was created using a pre-designed calendar template. I didn’t make any changes other than inserting my photographs in the appropriate picture frames. Below, you will find two posters that I created using pre-designed templates. In both the posters, I used a photo as the background and then inserted other photographs in the picture frames to complete the posters. You can even add other graphics and clipart, as well as include text on the posters, if you wish.

Picture Frames and Mask Effects

The high degree of flexibility in customizing templates and creating them from scratch is one of the unique features of Picture Collage Maker. The program has a variety of different picture frames and mask effects (as shown above) that can be used to customize templates. Also, included is a huge library of clipart which can be used on your collages, scrapbooks, posters, calendars and photo books.

How to Create a One Channel YouTube Banner?

In March 2013, YouTube introduced the One Channel layout for YouTube channels. It’s gives flexibility to YT users to customize and personalize their YT channels. One Channel banners can be created using Photoshop and other programs. I used Picture Collage Maker to create my YT banner. You can watch the video tutorial below to see how to create your own YT banner.

Video Tutorial: How to Make a Picture Collage?

In the video tutorial below, Cheryl Poirier from butterscotch.com will show us how to make a quick picture collage using PCM. In the tutorial, Cheryl uses a pre-designed template to create her own personalized one. Also, further down this web page, you will find more step-by-step tutorials on how to create picture collages, scrapbooks, greeting cards, posters and photo books using this photo editor to create your own personalized craft projects.