Collage editor
Combine several snips into one image: grid, justified rows or masonry, with column count, gap, rounded corners and background. The saved collage becomes a new snip in the gallery.
On this page (10 sections)
The collage editor combines several snips into one image using one of three layouts. Use it to turn a handful of captures into a single picture you can share. The preview is drawn from the same layout maths as the saved image, so the layout you see is the layout you get.
Opening the editor
Click Collage in the gallery toolbar. The editor does not depend on a multi-selection in the gallery: it has its own thumbnail tray, and you pick the snips to combine there. With fewer than two snips in the gallery, the editor does not open and you see Add at least two snips to make a collage.
On Windows the window stays on top, so it sits above the floating snips on your screen.
When the editor opens, some snips are already selected:
- Snips currently floating on screen start selected and already placed in the collage.
- If no snip is floating, the first four snips in the tray (the newest) are selected, so you see a collage right away instead of an empty canvas.
The thumbnail tray
The tray runs along the bottom of the window and shows the 80 newest snips in the gallery as thumbnails. The strip scrolls sideways when they do not all fit.
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Click a dimmed thumbnail | Adds that snip to the collage (at the end of the order) |
| Click a selected thumbnail | Removes that snip from the collage |
Thumbnails in the collage are drawn at full opacity with a blue border and a numbered badge in the top-right corner; thumbnails not in the collage are dimmed and have no badge.
The badge number is the snip’s position in the collage order, starting at 1. An added snip goes to the end; removing one renumbers the rest. This order decides which image fills which cell in every layout.
With nothing selected, the canvas says Pick images from the tray below to build a collage.
Layouts
Pick a layout with the three icon buttons at the left of the top toolbar. All three recompute as you add images, change the column count or drag the sliders.
| Layout | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Grid | Uniform square cells. Each image is scaled to fill its cell and cropped from the centre. Cells in a short last row widen to fill the full width. |
| Rows | Justified rows. Images keep their aspect ratio and each row is scaled to span the full width. |
| Masonry | Equal-width columns. Each image keeps its aspect ratio and drops into the shortest column. |
The default layout is Rows.
Column count
The top toolbar has − and + buttons on either side of a number. The number runs from 1 to 8 and defaults to 3. Each layout reads it differently:
- Grid: cells per row.
- Rows: the approximate number of images per row. Wide images take more room, so a row may hold fewer of them.
- Masonry: the number of columns.
Gap and Round
The bottom toolbar holds two sliders; each shows its value beside it, and both update the preview at once.
| Control | Range | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Gap | 0–40 (default 8) | Space between cells and around the edges of the collage |
| Round | 0–80 (default 0) | Corner radius of each cell. Corners are anti-aliased, and the radius never exceeds half a cell’s shorter side. |
Both values are in the collage’s own working units and scale with the collage in the saved image.
Background
Pick the background from the swatches in the top toolbar:
| Option | Swatch | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Transparent | Checkerboard | No background. The saved collage keeps full transparency; the preview shows a dark checkerboard so “no background” reads clearly. |
| White | White swatch | Solid white (default) |
| Black | Black swatch | Solid black |
| Custom | Round colour swatch | Any colour you pick from the wheel |
For a custom colour, click the round swatch at the end of the row to open the HSV wheel:
- Hue is the angle around the wheel and saturation the distance from the centre. Click or drag inside the wheel to pick.
- The brightness slider under the wheel, marked with a sun icon, sets how light the colour is.
Picking from the wheel switches the background to Custom automatically.
Use the transparent background when the collage will sit on another surface, such as a coloured slide; the area around rounded corners stays transparent too.
Reordering by swapping
To swap two images, click two cells in the preview:
- Click the first cell; it gets a blue highlight.
- Click a second cell; the two images trade places.
Clicking the same cell again cancels the pending swap. Removing an image from the tray also clears it.
Because the swap is stored in the collage order, it shows at once in the preview, in the tray’s badge numbers and in the saved image.
The preview
The preview is drawn from each snip’s image on disk, not from the tray thumbnails, so it stays sharp even in a large cell.
Saving
When you are happy with the preview, click Save. The editor:
- Loads every selected snip from disk at full resolution.
- Uses exactly the same layout maths as the preview.
- Scales and crops each image to fill its cell, rounds the corners and places it on the chosen background.
- Adds the result to the gallery as a new snip. Its card shows Collage where a monitor name would be.
The saved collage is 2048 pixels on its long side; the short side follows the collage’s aspect ratio.
Save is disabled while the collage is empty. To close without creating a snip, click Cancel or press Esc.
Keyboard
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Esc | Close without saving |
See also
- Floating snips: the on-screen snips the collage editor preselects
- Annotation editor: mark up a single snip with pen, shapes, arrows and text
- Gallery and search: where the Collage button lives and where the saved collage lands
- Sharing and export: send or upload the collage once it is in the gallery
If something on this page is missing or wrong, write to [email protected].