Collage apps face off!

Because I am someone who likes to take multiple shots, I always end up with a lot of pictures in my photo album. For people like me who are constantly looking for an app to organize pictures in an easy and convenient way, Pic collage can do the trick. Developed by Cardinal Blue and marketed as “A fun and simple way to create your own photo collages”, pic collage has quite a reputation for itself and is rated one of the top 10 photography app on iTunes.

The good:

• Pic collage is a really simple app that anyone can use and is idiot proof. The command is pretty straight forward:
• Tap to add photos
• Resize each photo by stretching or pinching them
• Rotate them with two fingers
• Delete photo with a simple flick

The bad:

• Unable to choose the Background colour. You can manually change the colour of the background by creating new collages which randomly assign a new background colour for you, but the fact remains that you cant choose the colour of the background. Needs more background colour.
• It would be nice if I could add text to it.
• New feature that allows you to add a border to the collage would be nice as well.
• Apparently you cant add more than 15 photos in one collage.
• Pic collage should provide collage templates for users who are lacking in artistic sense like me, but I guess for a free app, that could be a little bit too much to ask.

Verdict: Not Bad. I’ll use it once in a while for now. Highly recommended for those who are looking for a free app to organize your photos into a photo collage in a fast but fun way.

In case you missed it, Cardinal Blue was one of Echelon 2011′s Launchpad startups and was accepted into Dave McClure’s 500 Startups accelerator program.

Of course, there are similar apps which also aim to help users organize their cluttered photos, and one such app is Shape Collage. Shape collage has been around for quite some time since 2007 but their iOS app was only available in recent years. What Shape Collage can do is it allows you to choose the pictures and allow the app to convert them into collages of various shapes. Currently the app allows you to make collages in the a rectangular shape, heart shape (kinky!), circular, moon or even into text.

The good:

• Allows you to convert your photos into fun-shaped collage
• Easy to use
• The app helps you to organize your photos
• “A seriously fun photo collage app” – Lifehacker
• Various shapes are provided and with a few clicks, the chosen photos are organized into a photo collage. Good for people lacking in artistic sense like me.

The bad:

• You cannot decide the arrangement and alignment of the photos on the collage (the web version allows you to do this)
• Would really be nice if the photos on the shape collage can be adjusted or reshaped manually.

Verdict: Shape collage is really fun! Highly recommended for users who wants to make shape collages.

Personally I would prefer Shape Collage over Pic Collage because one, the fun factor, and two, organizing the photos in Pic Collage proved to be a much more hassle to me because no matter how I organize my photos, it just didn’t feel right. Here’s my attempt (using similar photos) in creating a photo collage using Pic Collage (top) and Shape Collage (bottom):

So, which one do you prefer? Pic Collage or Shape Collage?