Every December the same problem comes back. You want one card that shows the whole year, but you have hundreds of photos and the card has room for one.
A collage solves that: the year's best six or eight moments on one card, in a frame that makes it look like a card. Here's how to make one on your iPhone with Photo Collage (on the App Store as Collage Maker: Photo & Video). The image above uses the Winter holidays frame, with string lights and snowflakes around the photos.
1. Decide where the card is going
- Printed card: pick the shape of the card you're ordering before you add a single photo. Photo Collage has print sizes and custom sizes in the ratio menu (both are part of Premium). A square collage on a rectangular card gets cropped or white bars.
- Group chat or email: 4:5 or 1:1 is fine and looks good on a phone.
- Stories: 9:16, so the card fills the screen.
If you want both a printed card and a phone version, make the printed one first. You can duplicate it later in My collages and change the shape for the phone.
2. Pick the year's photos in one go
Go through your year and choose a few more photos than you need. Add them all at once. They fill the cells in order, and the extra ones wait in Extras below the collage. Switch to a bigger layout and photos move in from Extras on their own, so you can try six cells, then nine, without picking again.
A good mix is one big group photo plus a few small moments, like a trip, the dog or a birthday cake.
3. Choose a layout with one star photo
The picker opens on the number of photos you've added, so you only see layouts that fit. For a holiday card, layouts with one larger cell work well, because the group photo gets the big spot and the small moments go around it. The Hero and Bento layouts in the picker are built this way.
If the wrong photo landed in the big cell, press and hold it and drag it onto the one you want there. They swap places, and the crop goes with each photo. If someone's head is cut off, tap the photo and use Fit whole photo.
4. Add the Winter holidays frame
Open Frames and pick Winter holidays. The frame goes around the whole collage, so none of your photos get covered. If your card is for Thanksgiving instead, the Autumn leaves frame is in the same list.
For a card that will be printed, give it a bit more room at the edges. Labs trim a thin strip from every side when they cut the cards, so faces right at the outer edge can lose a few millimetres. In the border settings, raise the outer margin and the spacing a little, and pick a border colour that goes with the frame. A dark green or deep red tends to look warmer than plain white.
5. Make the photos look like one year
Photos from twelve months never match. Summer shots are bright, winter ones are dim and orange. Open Adjust and bring the darkest ones up, or pick one filter and apply it to all photos so the whole card has the same feel.
6. Add the greeting
Add text for the line people will actually read: "Happy holidays from the Millers", the year, or just your names. There are 41 fonts. Outline and shadow keep the text readable when it sits over a photo or the frame. Keep it to one line.
For the kids, turn the dog or the youngest into a cut-out sticker and place it on the card, sitting on the frame or peeking over a photo. Sticker cut-outs need iOS 17 or later.
7. Save it and send it
When it's done, the export sheet lets you choose the quality and the photo format, then share it or save it to Photos. For printing, choose the highest quality and upload that file to your print service.
The collage stays in My collages after you save it. If you find a typo in the greeting later, open it, fix it and save again.
Limits to know
- Print sizes, custom sizes and more than three cut-out stickers per collage are Premium.
- Cut-out stickers need an iPhone with iOS 17 or later.
- The Android version is on the older feature set, so the Winter holidays frame and these steps are for iPhone and iPad.
- Photo Collage makes the image. It doesn't print or mail cards.
Set the shape first, frame it, add one line of text. The rest of the year's photos can stay in the camera roll.