How to Create Animated Collages: Tips and How-To

Want to show your latest pictures to your friends and family without boring them senseless? Then grab your audience's attention with an animated collage. Say goodbye to uninspiring photo albums and tiring social media feeds. With an animated collage you will be able to both showcase your picture collection as well as your visionary style. If you have a portfolio to boast, presenting it via an animated collage will mark you as an artisan with an imagination. Even a dry business presentation will benefit from being displayed in an animated fashion.


Never tried making an animated photo collage before? No worries. In this article, we'll walk you through the process step-by-step, give you a few necessary tips, and also suggest you the perfect tool for the job. Let's get down to business.

We'll start with a few tips on how to make your animated collage project an eye-candy.

• When picking images for a slide with multiple placeholders, try to stick to a certain color palette. A unified look of the slide will be visually-pleasing and will help viewers shift their eyes from picture to picture at their own tempo. If you use pictures that have starkly different color schemes, the brightest will steal all the attention, rendering the images of more muted colors virtually invisible.

• Make sure to accompany your animated collage with a soundtrack. A silent video will never have the same impact as the one that has the right soundtrack. But which one is right, you might ask. Well, while there are no certain rules, here are some suggestions you might use as guidelines. If you are making a business presentation, stick to minimalistic ambient tunes that wouldn't stand out but only serve as a background. A portfolio in the form of an animated collage will work fine with upbeat elevator music. If you showcase your wedding pics through an animated collage, you'll never go wrong with a romantic song. A vacation pics can be accompanied with a sweet summer jam to match the mood.

• Stick to an appropriate running time. Don't be tempted to cram all your photos into one single presentation. This will make your animated video too drawn out. In other words, it will be plain boring. The perfect running time lies somewhere between 5 and 8 minutes.

• Dial down on effects. Since you are creating an animated collage, don't oversaturate your project with other kinds of effects. That implied keeping lighting or natural effects to a minimum, sticking to only one type of transitions, and omitting photo filters.

• Add text to your project. Captions will help you better convey the idea behind your video, regardless of whether it is a vacation pic parade or a Craftsman's portfolio. Just be sure to make those captions perfectly readable - use larger letters and stick to readable fonts. And leave those captions on the screen long enough for people to read.

Now that we have tips and guidelines out of the way, let's actually learn how to create an animated collage. Since the job is intricate, we'll need a reliable tool for it. We suggest going with SmartSHOW 3D. This moving collage maker has all the instruments you'll need to create a dynamic presentation. It harbors ready-to-use animated collage templates, themed and multipurpose slideshow stylepacks and over 400 effects and transitions of all kinds. This is how you can use this software for your cause.

1. Pick the Project Type

Once you run SmartSHOW 3D, you'll have three project options. First off, there are the Slideshow in 5 Minutes templates. These predesigned stylepacks come with their own animations (including animated collages) and only require you to add your images to create a video. Another option is the Slideshow Wizard, that is similar to the previous option, but lets you control some of the aspects, like transitions, tempo, filters, etc. The last option provides you with a blank project that should become a canvas for your creative process.

2. Use Collage Templates

While on the Add tab, find the Collages subtab. There you'll find premade animated collages. You can preview each of them to make sure they fit the style of your project. Add the chosen option to the timeline with a simple drag and drop. Then, insert the pictures you want to be featured in this animated slide. Add as many animated collage slides as you need, but make sure to create breaks with single-picture slides between them so as not to overcrowd your video.

3. Create Your Own Animated Collages

SmartSHOW 3D also comes with a nifty animation module that allows for custom animation creation. Insert a blank slide, then hit Edit. You'll open the animation module. Here, you can create any kind of motion animation based on the keyframe principle. You can make your photos appear and disappear, flip and rotate, fly around the frame or gently bounce all over it. There is no limit to what you can do with your picture animation-wise. What's more, this animation module lets you spice up your slides with lighting and nature effects, add captions and photo filters, and even create camera motion animations.

4. Accompany Your Video with Sound

Once you are through with creating your animated photo collage, add a soundtrack to it. This animated collage maker allows you to use any tune you like from your own collection. Besides, the program comes with a sound library of its own. There are over 200 tracks to choose from, and all the tunes are free to use. If your project calls for narration, add it with the help of the software's voice comments tool. Record yourself using the default microphone, then add those tracks to the timeline. Move them to the right spots and use audio editing tools to turn down the music for the duration of the comments.

5. Export Your Animated Collage Video

Now that you are through with your project, save it in an appropriate format. SmartSHOW 3D offers you over 30 export options that depend on how you want to share your creation. You are free to save it as a video for TV, smartphone or tablet, social media or video hosting site. Besides, you can even burn it to DVD and accompany your project with an animated play menu.

And this is it - that is how you can make a dynamic video with your photos. If you feel like you could use more tips or a more in-depth instruction, make sure to read how to make an animated collage blow-by-blow. And in the meantime we hope you now know how to turn your otherwise still and unimpressive images into dynamic and engaging collages.