Guides
Basics 5 min

How to make a collage on a phone

A hand holding a smartphone with the MyCollages editor open — building a collage on a phone

The same MyCollages editor runs right in your phone’s browser — no app to install, free, with no sign-up and no watermarks, and your photos stay on your device. The interface is responsive: the toolbar is at the bottom, sections open as a sheet that slides up, and everything is done with a tap. Let’s build a collage in five steps. (The same thing on a computer is in “How to make a collage on a computer”.)

Step 1. Pick a template

At the bottom, tap “Templates” — the panel slides up. The “Built-in” tab has more than a hundred ready layouts: the “Template type” filter splits them into rectangular and freeform (shapes), and the “Photo count” slider narrows them to the number of shots you have. Build your own layout in the builder — see “Templates for a collage and photo frames”.

Step 1: choosing a layout in the bottom sheet.

Step 2. Set the size

Tap “Size”. Take a ready preset (for example, “Instagram post”) or type your own width and height and press “Apply”. Next to it are the “Border thickness” tabs (the margin around the collage and the gap between cells) and “Cell radius” (rounded corners).

Step 2: the collage format and the bottom toolbar.

Step 3. Add photos

Tap “Photos” and the upload button — your phone’s gallery opens, pick your shots. You can also just tap an empty cell to add a photo straight into it. Then drag a photo from the pool into a cell; the same photo can go into several cells at once. Supported formats are JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP and iPhone HEIC/HEIF (converted automatically), up to 20 MB per file. A mark on the thumbnail hints at quality: a green check means high resolution (good for print), a red triangle means low resolution (it will look blurry), and no mark means normal quality (fine for screens and social media).

To adjust the framing, tap a filled cell: drag the photo with a finger, scale it with a pinch, and use the bottom bar for rotate, perspective, edge blur, flip and filters. For more, see “Photo editing” and “Photo filters for your pictures”.

Step 3: photos in the cells; tools live on the bottom bar.

Step 4. Style it: background, text, stickers

In “Background” choose a colour, gradient, texture or your own image, and add a shadow under the cells if you like. “Text” adds captions and titles with a choice of font (see “How to add text”), “Stickers” adds stickers, and “Frames” adds artistic framing for the occasion (see “How to use photo frames”). If text and stickers overlap, the “Layers” section controls the stacking order.

Step 4: background, text and stickers — all from the bottom bar.

Step 5. Save the collage

Tap “Download” and choose a format: JPG (for social media), PNG (lossless) or PDF (for print). Set the scale and quality — the file is saved to your phone. On Android it goes to the “Download” folder and your gallery. On iPhone, because of Safari’s limitations the direct download sometimes doesn’t fire — then press and hold the image and choose “Save to Photos”. To return to your work later, save a .json file from the “Save project” tab. For more, see “How to save and download a collage”.

Step 5: choosing the format before saving to the phone.

A few things for the phone

  • The zoom panel is hidden so it doesn’t cover the canvas: open it with the magnifier button in the header — it appears floating at the bottom (“−”, percentage, “＋”) and closes itself as soon as you open any other section.
  • The hamburger button at the top-left opens the menu: settings, fullscreen mode and help.
  • Undo and redo are the arrows in the header; to delete or duplicate a selected text or sticker, use the buttons on its panel.
  • Zoom out to see the whole collage at once, and zoom in to precisely move a small element.

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