There is nothing quite like the memories that are captured from photographs. I love taking pictures and keeping a record of everything. I think it’s one of the most important things that we can do for our children too. I love looking back on the photos from my childhood and always try to capture everything both big and small, for my son. He’s 8 and it’s truly mind-blowing to see how many pictures my husband and I have captured of him over the years. So, when I was told I was going to review a product at Collage.com, I couldn’t wait to get online and start making something unique for my family.
Collage.com is a website that lets you upload pictures, make them into a custom photo collage, and order high-quality printed products featuring your collage. You can also share Collage.com collages online for free. Each collage can include hundreds of pictures arranged a variety of shapes (they have 50+ to choose from), or however you like. There are sports shapes, hearts, circles, dog-themed shapes, wedding shapes and so many more. The possibilities are endless and you can make collages on cards, posters, blankets, canvases, a phone case or even a shower curtain! The products at Collage.com are ideal for showing off photos from special vacations, baby photos, weddings or sports photos.
My review entailed making a 20 x 30 poster print, which is the second to largest size you can create. The cost for a poster of this size is $29.99, but the poster prices start as low as $6.99. I have wanted to do something to document all of the little league baseball memories we’ve captured over the last several years and this was the perfect project for me. I had a blast making the collage and there really were so many great choices for shapes for my collage. Since I decided to do something with my son’s little league photos, I wanted to choose a baseball-themed shape and selected a baseball glove shape.
Once I decided on the shape, I then chose the photos on my computer that I wanted to use. It was really fun going back and looking at how much my son has changed since he started playing baseball—he was five, so I had several years of photos to sort through. I chose about 30 different pictures and it was really simple to upload them onto the Collage.com site. All I had to do then was select those photos and they were automatically placed into the poster. According to the company, the key technology that differentiates Collage.com from other software is its patent-pending auto-placement engine. It did make it incredibly easy to have the photos placed in the collage by the software. I could then move them around however I wanted and then choose to narrow down my choices a bit as I went a little overboard and picked too many photos at first (yes, I am a photo-crazy baseball mom).
It was easy to delete and swap photos out in the poster, but I did run into a few little glitches that I think Collage.com could improve upon. First, the photos around the edges of the design would get cut off and some of my favorite pictures weren’t showing up in the collage. You have to spend the time to go through and make sure you aren’t missing the photos you really love because all you could see in some pictures were feet or background (you can see in the picture to the right). That was kind of disappointing. I hope that they are working on a way to crop the photo within the application. The upside is that the photos are added without any gaps or overlapping, so that’s a major benefit that keeps your creation looking great.
The second thing that I noticed was that on the specialty-shaped designs like the baseball or even on the baseball glove that I did, the design can sometimes cut through faces on your photos. Like the black cut outs on the glove (you can see in the picture as well). You have to play around with your photos quite a bit to ensure you aren’t cutting off someone’s head in the photo. I had originally chosen the baseball shape, but I became too frustrated seeing most of the faces in my photos covered up by the design. I switched gears and went with the glove instead. The good news is that they are updating the site to make it easier plus they have a cool phone app that you can download and use your pictures right from your phone!
Overall though, I have to say it was a lot of fun creating my poster and the end result was definitely a homerun! My poster arrived earlier this week and it looks great. The paper is high-quality, 100-year archival and the print looks fantastic. My son was thrilled with it. We are going to have it matted and framed and will hang it in his room. He absolutely loved seeing all of the pictures I chose and it definitely brought a smile to our faces. I would recommend Collage.com to anyone that wants to create something special with photos. There are so many possibilities and the site will guide you easily through the process and as I mentioned above, you may have to play around a bit, but if you are willing to spend the time on it, you’ll end up with a wonderful way to display the memories you treasure the most.
Disclaimer: Kristine has personally reviewed the product listed above. She has not received any monetary compensation for her review but did receive a free product to try out so she could evaluate and use it for her review. Her thoughts & opinions in this review are unbiased & honest and your opinions may differ. Please read our official rules for giveaways before entering. Two Classy Chics is not responsible for shipment of this product