Make photo montages on your iPhone with Montager
Monday, May 31, 2010 at 11:30AM | Glyn Evans 
"Montager is free simple to use app for creating photo montages on your iPhone"
The App
This app is mega easy to use to use, offering 12 different montages using 3 photos from your camera roll. To use simply open the app, double tap one of the 3 frames to select a photo for that frame, then use two fingers to pinch and zoom the image, and one finger to position it.
When you have selected and positioned the 3 photos, you can either save your montage, or use the left/right arrows to
select any one of the 12 layouts available, repositioning your photos as needed.
When complete you can save or email your montage, but here is where my only complaint about this app comes in to play, and that is the dreaded resolution issue. By default this app saves at a poor 480 x 320 pixels, although there is an in app purchase option called "Go Pro", which costs £1.19/$1.99. This "Go Pro" option removes the apps watermark and increases the image resolution, however this is only bumped up to 600 x 400 pixels, which is still far from acceptable.
The toolbar
At the bottom of the screen you will see the app toolbar, which can be shown or hidden with a single tap. This toolbar has the following 7 icons, 2 left/right arrows keys, which are used to select the different layouts, a frame icon, which allows you to turn on/off the borders, a save icon, a send as email icon, an erase/create new montage icon and a help icon.
Hidden extras!
The free app has a little easter egg hidden away. If you send a montage via email 3 times, it unlocks a white border option.
Why was this app developed?
Well in the words of the developer "I was travelling recently, and I wanted to put a few photos into a montage. But, all the photo apps I downloaded added ugly frames, crashed constantly or were just plain awkward to use. So, I wrote a dedicated tool: Montager!"
Above: A sample montage created with Montager using photos taken during a recent trip to London.
So what do I think about Montager?
This is a nice app that lets you create photo montages on the go, but is sadly let down by its low-res output. That said it is ideal for creating quick and simple photo postcard to email to friends and family.
"Overall I like this app, I just wish it supported full-res."
AppStore Link: Montager - Price FREE (but with in-app purchase option)
Reader Comments (18)
Aside from the resolution, the water mark, the in app purchase of $1.99 to correct, but not perfect, both of those options, I also wish that it had the ability to adjust from only three images arranged in so many ways. Personally, I'm a huge fan of dyptichs, and I have not yet found a program that will do quite what I want to recreate that effect on my iPhone. Strip Designer and Life Cards come close, but they still require a border seperating the images, and sometimes I want them completely adjacent to one another.
To this apps credit, though, the UI is amazing! I'm going to keep it on hand and see what updates the developer designs for this app. Here's to hoping!!
I figured I'd download it too. It's buggy and crashed on me but I think it has potential. I'm not gonna drop $2 until there's some major upgrades though. I got the easter egg but right after I got it, the app crashed and now I don't have it anymore. We will have to wait and see but, I believe it's an app to keep your eye on.
I tend to agree with the other comments regarding the resolution. But what this app does do well is allow you manipulate the image within each individual frame so you can zoom in and re-position the shot on the fly instead of having to crop in one app and then compile in another, it means you can really play with a bunch of images until you find a collection that works. Here's my first attempt with this app
Having used StripDesigner to create simple & clean montages at full res, I decided to download Montage based on the review here so that I could make a comparison. To be fair, Montage is not a bad app but the lack of full resolution output sadly places this app in the "barely acceptable for text messages" category in my book. The UI is not bad, if not a little confusing with it's 80's era pixel icons. Also, it seems to only work in landscape mode, yet reverts back to portrait when choosing photos. On the + side, Montage allows you to change your layout by simply tapping on a button allowing the user to pick their photos, arrange them and then contiuously change the layout until finding the right one, however it seems you can only choose up to 3 photos. I do like how Montage allows you to remove the borders between photos, however at such low res output...who really gives a shit. Here is a montage I put together recently using StripDesigner after stumbling across a **Classic Car Show in El Dorado Hills, Ca.**
Looking forward to a full-res update with regards to the Montage app.
I could do a heck of alot with this app. The developers need to get it up to full res quicker than Batman and Robin. I did download it and now I am debating on whether to drop the 2 dollars for the upgrade even though it is not at full res just yet. I dont think they will be offering full res as a free update unless you purchase the upgrade to 600 x 400 (which is wack) now. What do you guys think??
Hi,
I'm the developer of Montager and I appreciate all the great feedback here. The layout engine supports higher resolution, but I kept it low as I was concerned with running out of memory and crashing. But from the comments here, the iTunes reviews and emails I've received, I'm *definitely* going to bump up the output resolution sooner rather than later.
There was also an annoying bug where the screen dims and the app is unresponsive when adding new photos. I've got an update in to Apple and hopefully that will be approved and released in the next day or so.
@xinsight - Do you have these same issues on the iPad platform? I'm no purist, I just want to get work done; with mobility. It would seem that some of the memory and speed issues may be less problematic on the iPad and I for one would welcome a compositional tool on that platform, especially if the resolution were acceptable.
@Jon Betts: From what I've heard the memory issues on the iPad are in some ways worse than the iPhone since the screen is higher resolution (1024x768 vs 480x320) and so more memory is needed. Yet the OS still has the same policy that if an app uses too much memory it will be shutdown without much warning (which looks like a crash to the end user). Montager on iPad is certainly do-able, but not necessarily easier. ;)
Thanks xinsight. I will purchase the upgrade and look out for the full res update. Then I will begin putting the app to use. I plan on doing some experimentation at low res.
More developers such as yourself need to communicate on this blog more often when concern arise.
@xinsight - Nice to see a dev response here. If in fact there is a full res update coming, that would be great.
@xinsight. Thanks for replying to the comments, and it is good to know that you will upgrade the app to support full-res. If possible, like others, I would love to see an iPad version of this app. If you want any help beta testing, then please let me know.
@insight Thanks for responding here as well! always nice to see developers take their products (and customers) seriously! By resolution, I was referring more to output resolution, not screen res. I don't create software for iPhone/iPad apps so I don't know all of the challenges involved, but I do know what is capable, and with apps like Keynote, Numbers, various games, Omnigraffle, etc. Currently on the iPad after only a copule of weeks of lead time (apple products not included of course!) leads me to believe that a lot is possible, at least down the road. It may not be easy, and it may require redevelopment/conception, but I also believe there are some liberating aspects to the iPad platform as well. Looking forward to see what you come up with!!
@Xinsight Sorry for typo in name, iPad spell checker thought it knew best and I didn't catch it until posting....you can call me John.
After reading reviews for other apps, I see it's a running theme that photography apps generally don't output high enough resolution. Sorry about that guys! I've made some code changes and Montager now outputs at 960x640 and 1500x1000 on the 3GS. (It takes a 3-4 seconds to render/save at higher res, but that's not too bad.) I'm going to do some more testing on the 3G and iPod Touch and then push out another update if all goes well.
Update: New version of Montager (1.1) is now available in the app store. Once you "Go Pro" you can output at 960x640 and 1440x960. Have fun!
@ xinsight
High resoultion is 1200x1600 3G & 1536x2048 on 3GS anything less is NOT full/high res & if upgrading to "Pro" that is NOT acceptable to pay for less that full res.
@xinsight: Please try to get the res up to 1200 X 1600 as soon as possible. You have developed a good app pretty much but full res is a must.
@xinsight: Thank you for the update. We'll hope to look forward to more updates & improvements to Montager in the future!