What software to create photo collage?

June 27, 2005 6:43 AM

What software can you recommend for creating a large collage suitable for printing at poster size?

I want to make a collage of at least 100 pictures and create a poster size print out of it. I'm looking to print at least 18" x 24" and maybe 24" x 36" so the resolution of the final image must be quite high.

Preferably, I don't want just a grid layout (contact sheet) as that has zero artistic flare to it.

Are there any software packages (windows or linux, sadly no Mac available, free is always better too) out there that do a decent job of creating a large collage where the photos are kind of mish-mashed together and piled on top of each other? Basically anything other than just a straight grid. Picasa has a decent collage feature for a handful of pictures, but is not feasable for a large number of pictures.

posted by gfroese to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Photoshop can do this with one of the batch-mode coversheet things. At least, I seem to remember there being a setting for non-grid placement. Sorry, I can't verify at work.
posted by odinsdream at 7:57 AM on June 27, 2005

Jamie Zawinski's PictureTile, perhaps?
posted by skryche at 7:59 AM on June 27, 2005

Maybe the Gimp has this sort of functionality. I could check that out too.

I'm just not crazy about laying this out by hand, working with 100 layers doesn't sound like a ton of fun with 256MB of RAM.
posted by gfroese at 8:02 AM on June 27, 2005

Wow, PictureTile rules. And you can set a negative margin to make the photos overlap.
posted by zsazsa at 8:04 AM on June 27, 2005

PictureTile definately looks like just what I need. Now only if I can get perl to install the Image::Magick module.
posted by gfroese at 8:35 AM on June 27, 2005

PictureTile is exactly what I was looking for in terms of output.

I was expecting something with a nice graphical front-end, but this has turned out to be even better because I can build these collages remotely over ssh wherever the pictures are.
posted by gfroese at 12:20 PM on June 28, 2005