Your own photo collage can be quite nice, for example as a background for your desktop, or for a poster or birthday card. You can compose such a collage with any photo editing tool, but a tool like Fotowall has a few functions that are specifically aimed at making such compositions.
photo wall
PriceFor free
Language
English
OS
Windows 7/8/10; Linux
Website
www.enricoros.com 6 Score 60
- Pros
- User friendly
- Solid editing capabilities
- Negatives
- No help function
- No real undo function
- Sometimes a bit rudimentary interface
Fotowall was originally a Linux application, but a portable Windows version is now also available (32 bits). The interface of the latest edition may look a bit dated, but with a name like Fotowall 1.0 Retro that is probably just the intention of the makers. The tool, on the other hand, has not lost any of its capabilities.
Photo manipulations
A logical start to your creation is to indicate the desired format. These can be preset or custom dimensions. As soon as you pick up a photo selection (from your own PC or directly from Flickr), Fotowall places it on the selected canvas. You then drag the photos to the desired locations or you put the 'randomizer' of Fotowall to work.
You can of course scale and rotate your photo selection, but it is also possible to distort, crop, place more towards the foreground or background, or cast them into a specific shape. You can also add your own shapes (in svg format). Only a few effects are available, such as glow effect, Sepia and Invert Colors. To a certain extent, '3D' effects are also possible, in the sense that you can put the background of your collage in a different perspective.
Text manipulations
You don't have to limit your collage to just images. In Fotowall you can add text frames and there is even a function for 'word clouds'. For the latter you simply point to a text file with the desired words, after which you set the minimum and maximum number of words to be included.
Export
You save interim results in your own format (with the extension fotowall), but for your final result more normal formats are available such as jpg, png, bmp and tiff. In addition, there is an export option as a desktop background or as a poster (using PosteRazor) and there are conversions to pdf and svg in between. Printing is of course also possible.
Conclusion
Fotowall is a handy tool for those who want to make a beautiful collage from local or online photos without much effort. It makes little difference whether it is intended as a desktop background, CD cover or poster.
