Photo greeting cards and invitations have become increasingly popular in recent years. As the quality of home photo printers improves, many families now have the capability to print their own. I received a free download of Picture Collage Maker for Mac to review. Downloaded in just minutes from the app store, this program allows me to create collages, save them as images, print, email, etc.

About:

Picture Collage Maker for Mac (retail $19.99) has more than 130 templates available for various occasions and holidays. You can also edit an existing template to fit a different theme. For example, a baby template can be adjusted and turned into a birthday template. Existing templates include wedding, baby, birthday, April Fools’, New Year’s, Christmas, Valentine’s, anniversary, Mother’s Day, and calendar designs. Additional template packages are available at 9 designs for $1.99.

• Customize and personalize your photos. 
• Add clip art and text, and move around.
• Resize, crop, and move images.
• Add or remove photos.
• Change photo frames.

My Experiences:

I’ve been using the app daily over the last week, mostly to make collages for blog posts. But I did make a collage of Baby J’s newborn pictures for the relatives. =) I saved it as a JPEG file, emailed it, and uploaded it to our shared Dropbox.

I found the program really easy to use. When you first download it, a video tutorial pops up, but I think most people can figure out the program without watching anything. Worst case scenario, there’s an undo button. 🙂 Our printer is kaput, so I haven’t tried printing any photos yet. I’ll have to update when I do. My public affairs experiences involved a great deal of design and layout as well as printing images. I’ve learned that the quality of the original image is important, but stretching or cropping a photo reduces its quality. These are things to keep in mind whenever working with photos you intend to print.

There is one thing that I think would make this app better. I’d like to see a font preview before I select the font and apply it to my text. Otherwise, I have to select and apply font after font, until I find a look I like. It’s a painstaking process, when I know there are easier ways out there.

I’ll be using this program to create Mother’s Day cards for both my mom and Hubby’s mother. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll print them or just email them, but either way- I’m sure they’ll be pleased. Moms love photos of their kids and grandkids, right?

Watch this quick video to see how to easily customize a greeting card with Picture Collage Maker for Mac:

Picture Collage Maker for Mac usually retails for $19.99, but is currently 30% off as a Mother’s Day sale. It’s a limited sale, so make your purchase soon!

Note: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.