Pet photo collage templates

Sort your camera roll into these and the collage picks itself. Most people have hundreds of the first kind and almost none of the rest, which is exactly why their collages look repetitive.

Five photos chosen one from each row beat twelve chosen for cuteness, and it is not close.

An animal photographed at normal distance is mostly floor, sofa and background, and that background is the same in every photo you own. Six such photos in a grid produce six rectangles of the same carpet.

A close photo removes the room. Fur fills the frame, a nose fills the frame, and suddenly the cells are different from one another because texture and colour differ even when the subject does not. One close photo in a six cell grid changes the whole collage, and two changes it completely.

This is also why dark animals photograph badly in collages and pale ones well: a black dog against a dark floor has no edge, so the cell reads as a shape rather than as an animal. For a dark pet, shoot against something light and get close.

Four pet collages worth making, with what each one needs.

The first year. Four to six photos in order, ideally in the same spot. A puppy on the same chair at three months and at twelve says more than any pair of portraits.

Two pets, or a pet and a person. Two cells, equal size. The comparison is the whole idea and any third photo weakens it.

The everything grid. Nine or twelve, no borders, photos touching. It should look like a pile rather than an arrangement, and it works precisely because it is not careful.

A memorial. Fewer photos, more space, a quiet background. Three is usually right. The restraint is the point, and a busy grid reads as cheerful in a way that is wrong for the occasion.

Crop before you place, not after. Pet photos are almost always taken from too far away, because you were standing. A crop that fills the cell with the animal is nearly always an improvement, and doing it inside the cell after placing means fighting the cell shape.

Let the background come from the fur. A ginger cat on a warm cream background, a black dog on a soft grey. It is the fastest way to make a collage of one animal look composed rather than assembled, because the whole thing then shares a palette by construction.

Both of these matter more for pets than for people, because with one subject there is nothing else to carry the composition.

Pick a template above and it opens ready. Drop your photos in, then look at whether more than one is the animal looking at the camera. If so, replace all but one, and the collage will improve more from that single edit than from anything else you could do to it.

Twenty more ideas, including what to do for a memorial, are in the pet collage guide.