Picture Collage Maker is a powerful, versatile way to build any photo collage and scrapbook project.

Pros: This is a package that lets a collage to be built quickly and easily. Initially there are three options starting with a blank collage project, using one of the standard templates available or use the wizard for the quickest results. One can create posters, calendars or greeting cards too.

First step is to choose a set of photos to be used for the collage of course. The well organized interface lets you browse the disks on the machine to pick out a file for use. Choosing a template is the next step and the application has a rich set of collage templates that have random arrangement, or well organized one or arranged around a theme such as a birthday. Photos can be masked and can have effects applied. Once again a large set of masks and the effects are available and can be chosen through simple mouse clicks. Individual photos can further be made to look pretty by applying frames and here too there’s a selection of frames available.

Clip art and textual strings are the final touches that helps create a pretty collage. Last step is to save this as a picture file and a set of formats are supported. Photo manipulation and effects like dropping shadows etc are available through a set of icons. The interface is well laid out and the menus and icons are easy to understand. The complete operation is simple and quick and learning time required is very little.

Cons: Bit of photo editing facilities would have been nice. Usually one needs simple enhancement on some of the pictures in the batch. In this case you will need to have all the pictures prepared complete before bringing them into the collage maker.

Overall: Simple, easy to use application, is well laid out and works quite efficiently and quickly. This is a 5 star candidate.