Police photo collage, cut to the cap and shoulders

A police photo collage, cut to the outline of an officer in a peaked cap and filled with your own photographs. The drawing stops at the hips rather than running full length, which makes it the broadest human figure in the shop and the one least like the soldier beside it: no legs, no narrow limbs, only cap, shoulders and torso. Measured against its own height it is 0.690 as wide, so it prints twenty by thirty inches - the third outline here to need that sheet rather than a square one. Everything else about it rests on the cap. The peak over the face is the one thing separating this figure from a man in a jacket, and it is thinner than a single photograph - which turns out not to matter, because it is cut by the mask rather than built out of cells. Rendered side by side at nine photographs, at twenty-five, at fifty-five, at a hundred and ten and at two hundred and fifty, the cap, the peak and the white band across it are identical, and the only thing that changes is how large each picture is. The two lines beneath are editable text in Canva.

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. The suggested count is where each photograph prints about two inches on each edge - large enough to make out a face across a room. Because this collage is cut to an outline rather than filling the sheet, that is far fewer photographs than a plain grid of the same size takes. The minimum is 9 photos; below that, parts of the outline can be left without a photo.

Questions

How many photos does a police photo collage need?

Whatever the table above suggests for your size. This page used to say the top of the range, on the reasoning that a brim a few millimetres deep could not be built out of four large photographs. It does not have to be built out of them at all: the brim is cut by the mask, so it arrives whole at any count. Rendered side by side at nine photographs and at two hundred and fifty, the cap is the same cap, and what the count actually decides is how large each of your pictures prints.

Does the uniform match a real force?

No, and it is worth knowing before you buy. The drawing is a service cap and a plain tunic - closer to a dress uniform than to anything worn on patrol - with no insignia, no number, no radio, no vest and no duty belt. It will not match the kit of any department, and the cut of the tunic will date it against a modern loadout. What makes the print belong to one officer is the photographs in it, not the outline round them.

Why does it stop at the hips?

Because the artwork does, and on this sheet that turns out to be the better half to have. A whole standing figure on a tall print is mostly legs, and legs are narrow, so the cells inside them shrink and the photographs stop being readable. Cutting at the hips spends the same paper on the chest and shoulders, which are the widest part of a person and so hold the largest pictures. It is the difference between this and the soldier, which is a full figure and pays for it.

Should there be gaps between the arms and the body?

Yes, and there are. The drawing has three openings - one either side between an arm and the torso, and the white band across the cap - and all three print as bare paper. They were closed until October 2026, and the cost of closing them was the thing people noticed: the officer printed as one solid mass from shoulder to hip with no arms in it, and the cap merged into the head. Keeping them means cutting the outline into three pieces rather than one, because a frame of photographs cannot carry a hole in the middle of it. The cuts run across the cap below the crown, which is the band itself and belongs there, and across the hips, which is the one seam in the figure the drawing does not have.

What occasions do people buy this for?

Retirement first, by a distance - thirty years of shift work is exactly the kind of span a wall of photographs says better than a card. Then graduation from the academy, promotions, and transfers out of a unit people were fond of. It is also bought as a memorial, and if that is what you are making, the wording underneath carries that weight rather than the outline, which names no occasion at all.

What do I actually get?

A Canva template already cut to this outline, with every cell in position, opening in a free Canva account. You drop the photographs in, set the two lines or delete them, and export the result to print wherever suits you. We print nothing and post nothing. The file sits in your account afterwards, so a better photograph next year can replace a worse one without starting again.

More collages like this

• All people photo collages
• Soldier photo collage
• Wedding photo collage
• Mother and child photo collage
• Father and son photo collage
• Woman photo collage
• Bodybuilder photo collage
• Female bodybuilder photo collage