Friday, February 19, 2010

Shaping Your Family Photos

Here's a new and fun way to share your old family photos - Shape Collage. This software application is free to download in a basic form. Just click on the "Download Shape Collage" - the file download will begin automatically. It took only a few seconds for the file to download for me. Double-click on the saved file that you downloaded to begin the installation and follow the on-screen instructions, similar to other software products.

The free version will produce collages in some standard forms - rectangle, heart, circle, or choose a text symbol, or even better, select "more" and design a custom shape of your own. Selecting photos to include in your collage is as simple as dragging and dropping them onto the photos 'window' or by clicking the add (+) button, located on the left side below the photos window and then individually selecting from the desired digital photos from your photo folders. The software provides a preview opportunity so if you don't like what you see, you can try something different or try different shapes until you find something that works best for you.

Once you like what you see, click on the "create" button and the collage will be formed in the centre window. The software allows you to save your collage(s) as image files in a JPEG format. Collages that are created and saved using the free version include a "shapecollage.com" watermark. Upgrading to the 'Pro' version for personal use adds features including the benefit of no watermark, if it bothers you. The cost of the 'Pro' version is reasonable at only $25.00.


The above collage was created using the 'rectangle' shape option and just 9 family photos. Shape Collage allows you to use hundreds of photos in each collage. The collage below used the same 9 photos but was shaped using the 'text' shape option that I set to the letter 'H' (for Hadden, of course). In both, you can see the watermark, touching the collage image in lower centre of the sample above and not touching any photos as it is placed at the bottom right of the collage below.



This application provides yet another way to display and share all of those old and current family photos in as creative a way as you please. The fact that there's a free version certainly makes it worth a try. (And for those that might worry about such things, I have no affiliation with Shape Collage whatsoever).

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