How to make a photo collage on your Mac

Neither Photos nor Preview on a Mac has a collage maker. The built-in ways are workarounds: a Shortcuts action that joins pictures into one, or a Keynote slide you lay out by hand and export as an image. Both work, both are free, and both take a few minutes the first time.

Koi's Shift wheel has a Collage tool: drag the photos, hold Shift, drop them on Collage, pick a layout and a canvas, Story included. We make Koi, so take that part with that in mind. Apple's steps come from its own guides, checked October 21, 2026.

Keynote is free on every Mac and gives you full control over the layout. Set the slide to the size you want, place the photos, export the slide as a picture.

1. Open Keynote and start a new presentation with a blank theme.
2. In the Document sidebar, click the pop-up menu below Slide Size and choose Custom Slide Size. For a square post type 1080 by 1080; for an Instagram story, 1080 by 1920.
3. Drag your photos onto the slide and resize them into a grid. Keynote's guides help you line them up.
4. Choose File, Export To, Images, pick this slide, and choose JPEG or PNG.
5. Click Next, pick a folder, and export.

The slide size steps are in Apple's Keynote guide, and the export in its guide to exporting, which notes that higher quality images make larger files. It's the most flexible free way, and the slowest.

The Shortcuts app on your Mac has a Combine Images action. It joins several pictures into one, side by side, stacked or in a grid, with spacing you set. You build it once:

1. Open Shortcuts and click the plus to make a new shortcut.
2. Add the Select Photos action and turn on Select Multiple.
3. Add Combine Images and choose how to combine them and the spacing.
4. Add Save File, so the picture lands in a folder you choose.
5. Run it, pick your photos, and the combined picture is saved.

It's great for two screenshots side by side. It doesn't give you a canvas size, so the result is as big as the photos make it, not 1080 by 1920.

1. Select the photos in Finder, or on your desktop, and start dragging them together.
2. While you're still holding them, press and hold Shift. The wheel opens, with “3 images” or however many in its middle.
3. Drop them on Collage. The collage window opens with every photo on one canvas.
4. Under Layout, pick Grid (and how many Columns), Row, Column or Featured, which makes one photo big beside the rest.
5. Under Canvas, pick Square (1:1), Landscape (16:9), Portrait (4:5) or Story (9:16), and a width from 1080 to 4096 pixels.
6. Choose whether photos fill their cells or show whole, and set Spacing, Corners and a background colour.
7. Click Create collage. “Beach collage.jpg”, named after the first photo, lands beside it.

• Forgot one? Click Add images…, or drop more photos on the collage.
• Under each photo's thumbnail, arrows move it earlier or later and a cross takes it out.
• Reset layout puts everything back to the start.
• The collage is saved as a JPEG. Your photos are never touched.
• It all runs on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded.

A story is 9:16, and 1080 by 1920 pixels is the usual size. A feed post in portrait is 4:5, or 1080 by 1350. In Koi:

1. Drag the photos with Shift held and drop them on Collage.
2. Under Canvas pick Story · 9:16 and a width of 1080. That makes a 1080 by 1920 picture.
3. Pick Column for photos stacked top to bottom, or Featured for one big photo and the rest below it.
4. Turn on Fill cells so there are no gaps, then Create collage.
5. AirDrop the JPEG to your phone and post it.

For a feed post use Portrait · 4:5 at 1080, which comes out 1080 by 1350. In Keynote, the same sizes go in Custom Slide Size.

A before-and-after, a room you painted or a haircut, is the simplest collage. In Koi, drag the two photos together with Shift held, drop them on Collage, pick Row and Landscape · 16:9, and set Spacing to 0 for a clean seam or keep a gap with a white background. Drag the “before” photo first, or use the arrows under its thumbnail, so it lands on the left.

• Faces cut off. Fill cells crops each photo to its cell. If a head gets cut, switch to Show whole, or pick a layout whose cells match the photos' shape.
• Too small to see. Six photos in a 1080 pixel story are each tiny. Three or four reads better on a phone.
• Mixed portrait and landscape photos. A Row of mixed shapes leaves odd crops. Featured, with the landscape one big, usually looks better.
• Big files. Photos straight from a camera can make a heavy collage. Compress it before you email it.

See how to compress an image on Mac for that last one, and how to crop a picture to 1:1 or 9:16 if you want to post a single photo instead.

• A one-off collage with text and stickers: Keynote.
• Two screenshots side by side, again and again: a Shortcuts shortcut.
• Quick grids and story collages without laying anything out: Koi's Collage, on the Shift wheel, which also puts a screenshot on a background.

Collage comes with Koi on every plan. Pro is $20 a month, or $192 a year, after a 3-day free trial that needs a card. Lifetime is paid once, from $59. See the plans, or how to use the Shift wheel.