How to make a round collage
- Open your photos. Eight or more makes a good circle. It opens on an uneven eight; mosaics and grids lead the Layout step's list.
- Pick the outline. Circle, hexagon or arch, in the Shape row of the Style step. The ground shows round the outside.
- Check the edges. The Shape section names any slot with most of itself outside the outline. Move a less important photo there, or choose a denser layout.
- Save. With a coloured ground it saves as JPG; with the ground set to none it saves a see-through PNG.
Circle, hexagon, arch
A circle drawn inside a square keeps about 79% of it: the four corners go. A hexagon keeps a little less of the square but has straight sides, which suits grids — the rows meet its flat top and bottom cleanly. The arch keeps the bottom square and rounds only the top, which is the friendliest of the three to a layout with a wide band along the bottom.
All three are cut by the same routine that draws the collage, so the outline on the stage is the outline in the file, to the pixel.
| Outline | Kept | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Circle | about 79% | Mosaics, even grids |
| Hexagon | about 65% | Even grids, bands |
| Arch | about 73% | Layouts with a wide bottom band |
Why dense layouts first
A round outline cuts hardest into the corner slots. In a layout of four, each corner slot is a quarter of the picture and can lose a third of itself. In a mosaic of eight or nine, the corner slots are small and the outline runs through many photos, so it reads as a circle rather than as four cropped photos.
For a WhatsApp profile picture — which is round anyway — the WhatsApp collage page goes further and offers only layouts whose every slot is at least half inside the circle.
Questions people ask about this one
Can I make a round collage with a transparent background?
Yes. Set Background to none in the Style step and it saves as a see-through PNG.
Does the circle crop my photos?
It cuts the outside of the whole collage. Each photo can still be moved inside its slot so the part you care about is inside the circle.
Is this the same as a WhatsApp DP?
Similar. For a DP, use the WhatsApp collage page — it shows the circle the app uses and filters the layouts for it.
Is anything uploaded?
No. The outline is cut in this tab.
Can I print a round collage?
Yes. Pick a print size in the Layout step; the file is made at 300 pixels per inch, and a see-through ground is filled with white for JPG and PDF, which the Save step tells you first.