Hexagon photo collage, a comb of your own pictures

A hexagon photo collage: a honeycomb of six-sided cells covering the whole sheet, one photograph to a cell, cut off at the edge of the paper. The cells deliberately run off all four edges rather than stopping as a tidy rectangle of whole hexagons, so the print reads as a piece cut out of a larger comb and the eye carries on past the frame instead of stopping at it. The lattice is solved from your photograph count rather than fixed, which means twelve pictures give twelve large cells up to a foot across while two hundred and twenty-five give two hundred and twenty-five small ones, at exactly the same shape either way. Nothing in the comb is left blank: a lattice rarely lands on a given count precisely, and the paper edge slices some cells too thin to hold a picture at all, so both kinds of leftover piece are folded into the photograph beside them. Pick this when you want the arrangement itself to be the first thing anybody notices.

See how it works in Canva: watch the how-to video.

How many photos fit

Every figure comes from the layout engine rather than a rule of thumb. This arrangement fills the sheet rather than an outline, so there is no count at which it stops working: the low end of each range is where the photographs print largest, the high end is where they print smallest, and the suggested figure is where each one prints about two inches on each edge - large enough to make out a face across a room.

Questions

What does a hexagon do to a face?

It takes the corners off, which is kinder than it sounds - a face sits in the middle of a frame, and the corners of a photograph are usually where the background is. What a hexagon handles badly is a picture whose subject reaches the edges: two people side by side, a dog in profile, anything long and horizontal. Those lose their ends. Crop that sort of picture tighter before you drop it in and the comb handles it well.

Why are the cells at the edge cut off?

Because a rectangle of whole hexagons has a jagged outline, and a jagged outline on a sheet of paper looks like a cutting error. Letting the comb bleed off every edge is what makes the print read as a fragment of something larger. Where the edge cuts a cell too thin to hold a photograph, that sliver is folded into its neighbour rather than left as a wedge of blank paper.

Are all the cells the same size?

Every whole cell is, exactly. The lattice is regular, with at most a tenth of vertical stretch either way applied to bring the row count out, which is well inside what the eye accepts as a regular comb. All the variation you can actually measure is at the edges, where the paper cuts cells to different widths.

If I replace a picture in Canva, do I lose the hexagon?

No. The hexagon is a shape Canva owns, with your photograph masked inside it, so dropping a different picture onto it keeps all six sides. You will do that for every cell: each one arrives holding a low-resolution sample, and every one has to be replaced with your own picture before you print. Change your mind about a photograph later and the only thing you lose is the photograph.

How many photographs does a comb need?

Anything in the range for your size, and the count is what sets the cell size - the lattice is re-solved for it rather than fitted into a fixed grid. At the low end you get a dozen or so broad hexagons that work like a stained-glass panel. At the high end you get hundreds of small ones that read as a single honeyed surface from across a room. Both are good; they are not the same piece.

What is delivered, and can I edit it?

A Canva template opening in a free account, with the lattice already solved, every cell already cut and every edge piece already folded in. You fill the cells and export. The hexagons are live shapes rather than flattened pixels, so you can recolour the paper behind them, move one picture to another cell, or pull a cell out entirely if you want a gap - the comb will not fall apart.

More collages like this

• All photo collage layouts
• Grid photo collage
• Photo collage with no gaps
• Photo collage poster with a title
• Magazine style photo collage
• Masonry photo collage
• Photo collage with white borders
• Polaroid style photo collage

Guides

• Grid, masonry or polaroid? How to choose a photo collage layout