Make a Photo Collage for Printing
A collage that looks perfect on a phone often prints badly, and the reason is almost always resolution. Screens show around 72 to 150 pixels per inch; print needs 300. A 1080 × 1080 collage that fills a phone screen prints as a sharp image only about 9 cm across — smaller than a postcard.
The fix is to build at print size from the beginning. A4 at 300 DPI is 2480 × 3508 pixels. Set that before you arrange anything, because changing the canvas size afterwards re-flows the layout.
If you are ordering from a print shop rather than printing at home, send the PDF and tell them the paper size. A PDF carries its page dimensions, so there is nothing for anyone to guess at, and that removes the most common cause of a print coming back the wrong scale.
Open this template in the editor
Recommended canvas size
A4 at 300 DPI = 2480 × 3508 px · A3 = 3508 × 4961 px · 4×6 inch = 1200 × 1800 px
300 DPI is the point where the eye stops resolving individual dots on paper at normal viewing distance. Going higher increases file size without a visible gain; going lower is visible as softness.
How to make it
- Set the canvas to A4 first Preset Size panel, then A4 Print HD (2480 × 3508). Do this before uploading.
- Use fewer, higher-quality photos A print rewards detail. Six large photos print better than twenty small ones, where each cell is receiving a low-resolution crop.
- Keep content away from the edges Print shops trim a few millimetres. Leave roughly 5 mm — about 60 px at this size — clear of text and faces on every side.
- Check each photo is big enough A photo filling a quarter of an A4 page needs to be at least 1200 px on its long side to print cleanly.
- Export the 300 DPI PDF Use Download 300 DPI Print PDF rather than the PNG. A PDF is what print shops expect and it carries the page size with it.
Tips that actually change the result
- Very dark backgrounds use a lot of ink and often print darker than they look on screen. A mid-tone or light background is safer for home printing.
- Thin light text on a dark background is the first thing to break in print. Keep text at least 2% of the canvas height.
- If the export fails on a phone at A4 size, do it on a computer — a 2480 × 3508 canvas at high multiplier is a large amount of memory for a mobile browser.
What usually goes wrong
This is the cause of almost every disappointing print. A 1080 px collage on A4 is being stretched past twice its size.
Trimming takes a few millimetres from every side. Keep faces and text about 60 px clear on an A4 canvas.
They consume ink and almost always print darker than the screen suggests. Mid-tone is safer, especially at home.
Print rewards detail. Six large photos look considered; twenty small ones look like a contact sheet and each one is a low-resolution crop.
Questions
What pixel size is A4 at 300 DPI?
2480 × 3508 pixels. A4 is 210 × 297 mm, which is 8.27 × 11.69 inches, and multiplying by 300 gives those numbers.
PNG or PDF for printing?
PDF. It carries the intended page size, so the print shop does not have to guess the scale. A PNG is just pixels with no physical size attached.
Why does my print look blurry when the screen looked fine?
The canvas was almost certainly built at screen size. A 1080 px collage printed on A4 is being stretched to about 2480 px, so every pixel is enlarged more than twice.
How much margin should I leave?
About 5 mm on every side — roughly 60 px on an A4 canvas at 300 DPI. Printers trim, and content in that band may be lost.