Frames By Mail » Blog » Design and Frame a Custom Photo Collage
Design and Frame a Custom Photo Collage
Published on July, 17 2021 by John Kelly
Photo collages are a great way to style and show off a collection of photographs, letter images, art prints, class portraits, or just about anything else in a single, easy to hang picture frame. Whether you want to cut out mat openings in fun shapes and patterns for letter images, or arrange dozens of pictures of your entire graduating class in orderly fashion, framesbymail.com offers you the tools to design your own custom multi-opening collage frame.
Getting started is easy and we will walk you through the steps you need to design your first photo collage. You can create photo collages up to 60" x 40" and your design is limited only by your creativity. Before long, your custom multi-opening mat will be arriving at your door!
1. Collect and arrange the media you want to add to your collage.
Find all the photos you want to arrange in your collage and place them in one easy to access place on your computer. You'll need to find these again when it is time to upload your photographs to our website, so it can be helpful to note where on your computer these images are.
2. Get started designing your collage.
There are few limits to how you can design your photo collage! It may be easier to draw out what you envision on a piece of paper and then use our mat creator to bring your photo collage schematics to life. If you are struggling with creativity and want something simpler, you can start with our pre-made collage frames. If you see a pre-made design you like, you can click the design to open the collage in our custom frame shop. From there, click on the matting tab, and then hit the 'Modify multi-opening mat' button to load the collage mat into our custom mat designer. If you want something unique, you can create your own collage from scratch by heading over to the custom multi-opening collage designer to get started.
3. Determine the size of your collage.
Knowing the total size of your collage isn't required to get started, but having a canvas big enough to fit all your photos is a good start. If you aren't using a pre-made collage, select a size that roughly fits your vision for your collage. You can always adjust the size later if needed.
4. Add and arrange the mat openings where ever you like on the collage.
Our custom collage mat designer has tons of tools to help you design the mat. Manually add openings, select their shape and size, and drag to rearrange and resize the openings where ever you like. For more precision in your mat opening placements, you can enable the grid which will automatically snap your translations and resizes neatly into place. Alternatively, if drag and dropping isn't for you, you can click on an opening and then type in the sizes and positions using the opening commander tool below the canvas. You can explore all the tools we offer in the custom photo collage designer and get the perfect design. If you want a quick, simple and symmetric layout, use the Mat Auto-Layout Designer. by toggling the 'disabled' button to 'enabled'.
5. Select your top mat color and add a second mat layer if desired.
You can choose any of our many mat colors for the top mat. If you would like, you may add a second mat in a second color to add style to your collage. Adding a second mat layer to your photo collage can look great for collages with a few images, but may crowd your design for collages with dozens of images. The choice is yours!
6. Finally, add your images to the photo collage.
Double click on an opening and you'll be shown a popup that will allow you to upload and add an image. Upload the images you would like in your photo collage, and choose whether to fit the image to the current opening size, or if you the mat opening should be resized to accommodate the image aspect ratio.
That's all it takes! Now you are ready to frame your photo collage without adding a frame. If you already have your own frame, or don't need a frame, you can click 'Add To Cart' to purchase your multi-opening photo collage. If you would like to purchase a custom frame, plexiglass, or anything else with your photo collage, scroll to the bottom of the page and click the 'Send To Frame Shop' button to frame your photo collage in our custom frame shop!