Create fun photos and collages with Composure editor on the Mac

Composure is a free photo editor for macOS that enables you to create attractive collages and have fun with your photos by adding text and stickers. Print or share them online. App review.

Adobe has nothing to fear from this photo editor because it targets a different section of the market. Composure is purely for fun and it enables you to turn multiple photographs into collages with fancy frames and layouts, and it enables you to add a variety of fun stickers to images and to add text.

It is a lightweight fun app. and if you want to share your photos online, such as on Facebook and Instagram, this is a great tool. It is not for professional photographers wanting to enhance their photographs.

The app is very easy to use and the controls and features are simple, but do the job well.

Load photos in Composure

The first task is to load some photos into the tray on the right side of the app window. Photos can be selected from within the Photos library on the Mac and multiple images can be chosen and loaded in one go.

Select a collage layout

The tabs down the left-hand side of the app provide access to five sections and although you can jump to any section, they are in the order you need them, so you just work your way down.

The first tab is used to select the layout for the collage and there are over 50 designs to choose from. There can be anywhere from one photo to nine in the collage. Down at the bottom of the layouts panel is a collection of preset aspect ratios. There are nine to choose from including 1:1. 16:9, 3:2, 4:3 and A4.

Add the photos

After selecting a layout, the photos can be dragged from the tray on the right and placed in the layout. A small toolbar appears and this enables images to be resized and you can zoom in and out. The image can be flipped horizontally or vertically.

An automatic enhancement button sharpens and adjusts the contrast, brightness and colour. There is little in the way of photo enhancement functions apart from this one tool, so your photos have to be nearly perfect before loading them. It is the only disappointment in the app.

Apply filters to photos

Select the Filters tab and there are over 30 filters that apply various colour effects to the selected photo in the collage. I wouldn’t call them outstanding and I have seen better, but they are OK. Clicking a filter removes the old one and applies the new one, so you can test each one and find the best.

Add a photo frame

The background to the collage can be coloured or a pattern can be added on the Frames tab. There are around 75 to choose from and their only purpose is to add colour and fun to your photo layouts.

The size of the photo frame can be adjusted and the corners can be rounded using simple sliders to adjust them.

Add stickers to photos

There are 19 categories of stickers that can be added to the photos in the collage. These include accessories, hats, animals, party, speech bubbles, shapes, food, steampunk and so on. They can be used to add fun features to images you are sharing on social media.

Around half of the sticker categories are locked and must be purchased in order to use them ($0.99 to $2.99), but eight categories are free. Stickers can be dragged to the photos and resized, flipped horizontally and vertically.

Add text to the collage

The Text tab enables you to add text to the photos in the collage or frame, such as titles, captions, speech bubbles, funny memes and so on. There are over 20 fonts to choose from and there are preset colours or you can choose any from the usual macOS colour selector.

Text can be aligned left, right or centered and once places, it can be dragged into position and the size adjusted with plus and minus buttons.

Share or save your collages

All that remains is to save it or share it, or both. There are several file formats to choose from, including jpg and png, and the size is set as a slider. Setting it to maximum set the with and/or the height to 3,200 pixels, which is large enough for most purposes.

The sharing features are those provided by macOS, so Twitter, Facebook, Messages, Mail and so on. If a collage is saved, you can share it or use it anywhere.

App: Composure (Mac App Store)
Price: Free
By: Stuck Pixel, Inc
Size: 42.5MB
macOS: 10.8 or later
Verdict: Lacks photo enhancement, but good for creating fun collages for sharing with friends or on social media