Photo Collage

Summary

Photo collages are fun because they can look very tailored without having had to do too much effort. (Not that a minimal effort + a convincing-enough looking outcome is what constitutes my idea of fun per se, but you get my drift.) I've tried my hand at a few homemade, hand-made collages and have long wondered why no one had come up with the idea of coming out with a collage app. Well, now there's Photo Collage and I tested this app for you. Find out more below.

Test device: Samsung Galaxy Nexus
Android version: 4.1.1
Root: No
Modification: None

Permissions: I couldn't work out why the app requires my location, but aside from this it seems OK.

Collages are fun—this we can agree on. And that's precisely why I was keen to try out Photo Collage, although I no longer dare get my hopes up for photo apps (trust me, I've done the rounds and have seen the good, the bad and the bizarre).

Photo Collage comes with two modes: Edit and Camera. With Edit you can select an image from your gallery and start working on them to turn them into collages. Select up to 10 pics (that's the limit for making a collage).
Use Camera Mode in case you want to shoot a quick pic to integrate into your collage.

So how does one go about making a collage? After you've selected your images within the Edit mode, pick between Template and Free. Template provides, well, templates, whereas Free allows you to free style it. Rotate images, change their sizes, cut and crop—but unfortunately there's no option for changing the background, and while there is an option to download more “Frames”, the app crashed on me every time I attempted to do so.
I therefore had to keep using the provided backgrounds (which are a bit too bright for my liking).

Shake your smartphone in order to generate a random picture selection. While this is indeed a fun little gimmick, I never particularly liked the resulting collages. 

Template Mode comes with a number of options, though you can manipulate certain aspects of the process such as photo sequence and zooming. Shake the device in order to generate changes. Frames are meant to be an option here also (i.e. downloading them is) but, again, this caused the app to crash during our test runs.
What strikes me as being a neat feature is that photos can be added to either mode in retrospect. This means that once you've made a collage you can add more pictures to it later.

Camera Mode is slightly different. Users can choose the form and amount of photos they wish to use. A number of presets are available so go ahead and nose around, I think there should be something in there for everyone.
Once you've selected a preset you need only shoot a few pics to then add to your collage.

Finished collages can be saved to the smartphone as well as shared via several social networks, email. Dropbox or Picasa.

Bottom line:

Photo Collage is a fun app for sure, but I'm not sure about how much use I'll get out of it.
The features the app provides are good and allow users to personalise their collages to a certain degree. That said, the app's functionality is not quite there yet and the app does not provide enough options to my liking. This is partly due to the bugs (downloading frames was not possible), but the editing options aren't fleshed out enough, either. Especially the Free Mode should offer more than what it currently does.

Overall Photo Collage has quite a lot going for it but there is still room for improvement.

Photo Collage is easy to use and it's set up in a straight forward way. Editing images is a piece of cake and doesn't require any kind of special tutoring. Nicely done.

Photo Collage runs smoothly enough, although it did crash whenever I tried uploading new frames. Unfortunately, my unfinished collages were lost in this way, which is rather annoying, which is why I'm awarding three stars in this category.

Photo Collage is free from Google Play. Ads are featured.