The Trotternish Pumpkin

Question: What does the Trotternish peninsula of Skye and a pumpkin have in common?
Answer: The images in the two blog posts were assembled using PhotoGrid!

When I was writing the blog post about our trip around the Trotternish peninsula I looked high and low for software to easily create a grid of photos. I found a few options but they were either a) a feature in a huge piece of software or b) not able to create the kind of image I wanted. Of course this could mean only one thing... I'd have to write the software myself.

The image in the Trotternish blog post was from the first, very basic version of what I'm now calling PhotoGrid -- it arranged the photos in a grid with the only option being the number of rows. The software has advanced quite a bit since then as you can tell if you look at the image in the pumpkin post. Here is a screenshot of the latest version:

There are still lots of things that I would like the program to do that it doesn't but hopefully I'll find the time to add new features soon. For now at least the main features are:

• Auto-arrange will attempt to separate images of a similar colour to produce a more appealing grid -- for example, if your photos are either mostly white or mostly black you will end up with a chequer board pattern.
• The border colour is determined by working out the average colour of the photo as this is unlikely to clash with the photo.

Eventually I'll clean up the code and release it but for now you can and use the software to create your own grids.

If you have any comments/suggestions about PhotoGrid or ideas for future versions then please leave a comment and I'll see what I can do.

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v1.0.0 - 19/08/2010:Lots of bug fixes and performance improvements. Some new artwork and better error handling. There were some changes to the way in which the application can be started from this page. If you have used the application before and now it won't start, sorry, but see this post for details on how to fix things.

v0.4.0 - 06/01/2010:Almost no code changes but this release coincides with the opening up of the source code.

v0.3.1 - 30/01/2010:Quite a few performance improvements and real feedback on progress of loading images or saved projects. You can also now choose auto to reset the border colour to the default.

v0.3.0 - 24/01/2010:You can now customize each tile (or a set of tiles) by right clicking on them. This allows you to set the border colour and specify a title and URL which can be used to produce a HTML image map. Also when saving the grid you now have some control over the size of the generated image.

v0.2.2 - 20/01/2010:Fixed a small bug in v0.2.1 and some serious refactoring that will make the new features easier t0 implement.

v0.2.1 - 18/01/2010:More code simplification, added an extra theme colour (the average colour across all photos), and added some code in preparation for new features I'm intending to add soon.

v0.2.0 - 12/11/2009: Simplified a lot of the code but more importantly removed the assumption that images were always 4:3. Each tile is now assumed to have the same aspect ratio as the first tile in the grid.

v0.1.1 - 10/11/2009: The only change in this release is to use all known JPEG file extensions (ignoring case) when filtering the file list whilst trying to add photos.

v0.1.0 - 09/11/2009: First public release of PhotoGrid.