What this collage maker does, and what it deliberately does not
It builds a grid collage. You choose how many columns, what shape each cell is, how much space sits between them and what colour fills that space, and every photo is cover-cropped to fit its cell exactly.
What it does not do is freeform layout: no dragging photos to arbitrary positions, no overlapping frames, no scrapbook stickers. That is a different kind of tool and a much heavier one. A grid covers the cases people actually come here for, and it produces a result that looks deliberate rather than assembled.
Cover crop is the important decision in any photo collage
Every photo you add is almost certainly a different shape from the cell it lands in. Something has to give, and there are only two honest options.
Fitting the photo inside the cell preserves all of it but leaves bars of background on two sides, and since each photo is a different shape, those bars are different on every cell. The grid stops reading as a grid.
Covering the cell crops the overflow instead. Every cell is filled edge to edge, the grid is uniform, and the cost is that the edges of each photo are trimmed. This tool covers, and centres the crop, which is the right default because subjects are usually near the middle. If something important sits at the edge of a photo, crop it to roughly the cell shape yourself before adding it.
Picking a cell shape
Square is the default because it is what a grid usually means, and it works at any column count.
Portrait at 4:5 is the tallest shape Instagram permits, so a 2-column portrait collage takes up the most feed space available. Landscape at 3:2 matches most camera output and wastes the least of a horizontal photo. Story at 9:16 is for a single-column strip meant to be viewed full-screen on a phone.
The gap does double duty
The gap value sets both the space between cells and the border around the whole canvas, so a single number gives you an evenly framed result rather than something with tight edges and loose middles. Set it to zero for a seamless mosaic where the photos touch.
The background colour shows through both, so on a white background the gaps read as a print-style mount, and on black they disappear into a dark feed.