Masonry photo collage, hanging above a sideboard

Masonry photo collage, columns of your own pictures

Name: Masonry photo collage, columns of your own pictures
Brand: Huge Photo Collage
Price: 9.99 USD
Availability: InStock

$9.99

Design yours free

A masonry photo collage: columns of one fixed width, pictures stacked down them, each picture as deep as its own proportions make it. Every photograph drops into whichever column is shortest at the moment it is placed, which is what keeps the columns level without anything being rearranged afterwards. On a two-by-three-foot print holding two hundred and twenty-five pictures that gives thirteen columns, every picture exactly an inch and three-quarters wide, and twenty-five different depths down the sheet between roughly an inch and a quarter and two and a quarter. The ragged bottom edge masonry has on a scrolling page is deliberately not what you get: on paper a hard edge turns raggedness into an accident, so the columns are stretched slightly to finish level with the bottom margin. The vertical rhythm is the entire character of the thing. Choose it if your set is mostly phone photographs held upright, and you want the piece to feel tall rather than gridded.

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.

Print size	Photos	Suggested
12 × 12″	10–60	30
12 × 18″	15–100	45
16 × 20″	20–140	70
16 × 24″	25–170	80
20 × 20″	25–180	80
20 × 30″	40–275	130
24 × 24″	35–250	120
24 × 36″	55–375	180
30 × 40″	80–525	250
36 × 54″	120–875	400
40 × 60″	150–1075	500

Questions

How is this different from the magazine-style layout?

They are mirror images. Magazine style varies the depth of rows and holds the side margins straight; masonry fixes the width of columns and holds the top and bottom straight. The difference you notice is which way the eye travels - down a column here, across a row there - and which pictures get room. A tall photograph commands a lot of space in a masonry column and very little in a justified row. A wide one is the other way about.

How many columns will mine have?

Solved from the count and the proportions of the sheet, not fixed in advance. Two hundred and twenty-five pictures on a two-by-three-foot portrait sheet give thirteen; fewer pictures give fewer and wider columns, and a sheet turned sideways gives more of them. What never varies is that every picture in the finished piece is exactly as wide as every other one.

Do the columns all end at the same place?

Yes, at the bottom margin, and that is an edit rather than an accident of the packing. Photographs go to the shortest column as they are placed, which gets the columns close to level on its own, and the small residue left over is taken up by stretching each column to meet the margin exactly. The web version of this look leaves them ragged because a page scrolls; a print has an edge, and raggedness against an edge reads as a mistake.

Does that stretching distort my pictures?

No. A column made slightly deeper gives each of its cells slightly more height, and the extra height is taken up by showing a little less of the picture rather than by pulling it out of shape. The effect on any one photograph is a percent or two off the top and bottom. Nothing in the engine will ever stretch a picture to fill a box.

Is there a count where this stops looking right?

At the very bottom of the range it begins to read as a few tall strips rather than as masonry, because you need enough pictures per column for the staggering to be visible. Three or four pictures deep is where the rhythm appears. The suggested figure in the table - the count at which each photograph prints about two inches on each edge - is comfortably past that for every size, so unless you are deliberately working near the minimum it is not something to plan around.

What exactly is supplied?

A Canva template with the column count, the widths and the stacking already worked out, which opens in a free Canva account. Your part is the pictures and the export. Nothing physical is produced at this end, and the design stays in your account to come back to.