Creating a collage with PhotoGrid

The key to winning judged competitions is to make your entry stand out – do something that’s a little bit different to your competitors. In the case of a photo competition (in particular on Instagram), creating a collage is a simple and effective way to do this.

Because so few people create collage entries for competitions, promoters don’t usually include in T&Cs that collages AREN’T allowed. But do check before you enter (you might even want to tweet or ask them on Facebook). In a recent Paym competition, £250 was awarded daily to the best photo, and several of the entries were collages!

There are several reasons why it might be worth creating a collage entry for a photo competition:

• You have a story to tell, and one photo isn’t enough – eg. making a recipe, stages of a project
• To use Before & After shots – eg. a hairstyle or a room makeover
• Create an outfit – eg. for ‘how would you style…’ comps

To create a collage you can use software on your computer such as Photoshop – but it’s much quicker and easier to just download an app to your smartphone or tablet.

How to create a collage using PhotoGrid

Below is my short YouTube tutorial on how to create a basic collage – you can download PhotoGrid for free at Google Play or iTunes. There are many apps that will do the same, but PhotoGrid is my preference!

Before creating your collage, you’ll need your photos stored on your device’s camera roll – so if they’re on your PC, copy them over or email them to yourself and save to your device.

• Open up the PhotoGrid app – there are ad banners at the top, ignore them!
• Tap Grid and select the photos you want to use by tapping
• Tap Next and if required, tap Layout and swipe to choose a different one
• Resize, move and rotate the photos in the boxes by using two fingers
• Move the box borders by tapping and dragging on the green dots
• Swap photos if required by tapping them and choosing Swap then selecting a photo to swap with
• You can Flip or Rotate individual photos using the icons at the bottom of the screen
• Use the Border, Filter, Sticker, Background options if required
• Tap Save – it will save to your camera roll. You can then attach it to emails, tweets or open in Instagram.

Top tip

If you want to enter a fashion competition to style an outfit, take screenshots on your device to use. Here’s a collage I put together using iPhone screenshots from the Reiss website.

There are lots more things you can do in PhotoGrid, including making slideshows and adding all sorts of fancy text, stickers and backgrounds. Personally, I think less is more – but why not have a play around and see what you can come up with?

Did you find this useful? Subscribe to my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/superluckydi and the SuperLucky newsletter for more comping tips!

See also: How to enter Instagram Competitions, How to enter a Regram competition