PicPile documentation

Turn a pile of images into one polished picture. Drop them into a styled grid or frame each on its own, label them with titles and captions, and export sharp — PicPile handles the padding, backdrops, corners, and shadows. This page walks through how to use it.

Installation

PicPile runs on the Mac, iPhone and iPad. On the Mac it comes two ways: the download from bendansby.com/apps/picpile is a notarized .dmg — open it and drag PicPile.app to your Applications folder — or the App Store version, which installs and updates the usual way. On iPhone and iPad, PicPile comes from the App Store; one purchase covers the Mac, iPhone and iPad store versions.

On the Mac, PicPile requires macOS 13 Ventura or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel, and is a universal binary that launches instantly. On iPhone and iPad it requires iOS 17 / iPadOS 17 or later. A .picpile document made on one opens on the others. The direct-download build auto-updates via Sparkle. See License for the differences between the two channels.

Adding images

There are three ways to get images into PicPile — pick whichever fits what you're already doing:

Way in	How
Drag	Drop image files, or a whole folder of them, onto the canvas — including drags straight out of Photos.app or PhotoPop, not just Finder.
Open	Choose images (or folders) from a panel via Add….
Paste	`⌘V` takes both copied files and raw image data — a screenshot, or a copy straight from Preview.

PicPile reads PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, HEIC, HEIF, and WebP. A photo dropped in while another is selected inherits that image's styling (backdrop, text color) automatically, so a batch stays visually consistent as you build it up.

Because paste accepts raw image data, you can grab a screenshot and drop it into PicPile without ever saving it to disk first.

Grid, Fan, or Solo

PicPile works three ways, and you switch between them with one click:

Grid. Every image is tiled into one aligned card and exported as a single composite picture. Rows size to their own images' proportions, so a mixed batch doesn't letterbox — or pick Mosaic spacing to set them edge to edge.
Fan. The images spread from a shared hinge below the stack, each turned a little further than the last and overlapping its neighbour — a hand of fanned photos. Spacing decides how widely they fan out before they overlap, and Fan carries its own title and subtitle (see Text).
Solo. Each shot is framed the same way and exported as its own file, so a batch comes out consistently styled without merging into one image. A stepper in the toolbar (and the arrow keys) move you through the pile one photo at a time.

Organizing your pile

Once images are in, the thumbnail strip along the bottom and the canvas itself give you a few ways to arrange them:

Action	How
Reorder	Drag a thumbnail to a new position. Grid layout and the order images export in both follow the new sequence.
Remove	Click the × that appears on a thumbnail.
Rotate	Hover an image on the canvas and click the rotate glyph in its corner — or select it and press `⌘R` — to turn it a quarter-turn clockwise.
Navigate	With an image selected, the arrow keys move the selection — left/right/up/down across a grid's rows and columns, or step to the previous/next photo in Solo mode.

Every one of these — reordering, rotating, removing — is undoable with the usual ⌘Z.

Canvas

The inspector on the right is grouped into three sections — Canvas, Images, and Text. Canvas shapes the whole picture:

Control	What it does
Canvas Aspect	Auto, 1:1, 4:3, 16:10, or 9:16. See Framing.
Padding	The margin around the artwork — None, Snug, Roomy, or Wide.
Spacing	Grid and Fan only. In Grid, the gap between tiles — Mosaic, Tight, Even, or Airy. In Fan, how widely the cards spread before they overlap — Tight, Even, or Airy.
Backdrop	None (transparent), a custom color, or a picture of your own — cropped to fill behind the pile.

Set the backdrop to None when you want to drop the result onto something else later, or pick a custom color or picture to match a brand or a page.

Mosaic sets Grid's pictures edge to edge: each one is cropped to fill its own cell, with no gaps and no titles or captions in between. Fan has no Mosaic — switch a Mosaic grid to Fan and it spreads at Tight, then goes back to Mosaic when you return to Grid.

In Fan, Tight, Even, and Airy each spread the cards across a different arc, so the three stay distinct however many pictures the Fan holds.

Framing

Canvas Aspect works in all three modes. It can fit the content, or give the canvas a fixed shape:

Auto. Fit the canvas to the content — the grid's own layout in Grid, the arc's own bounds in Fan, the shot's own aspect in Solo.
A fixed ratio — 1:1, 4:3, 16:10, or 9:16 (a tall frame for Stories/Reels-style crops). The content is fitted inside, with the backdrop showing through any gaps.

The live preview shows exactly what you'll export as you change the frame: a checkerboard wherever the export will be transparent, a dashed frame on its precise edges, and the pixel size in the toolbar. No guesswork before you commit.

Images

The Images section styles every picture on the canvas:

Control	What it does
Image Aspect	Original keeps each picture's own proportions. 1:1, 4:3, 16:10, or 9:16 crops every picture (from the center) to one shape — in Grid, Fan, and Solo alike.
Corner	Corner rounding on the images — Sharp, Soft, Round, or Pill.
Effect	A soft Shadow or Glow behind the artwork, or Off.

Image Aspect and Canvas Aspect are separate: Image Aspect crops the pictures themselves, Canvas Aspect shapes the frame they sit in.

Text

The Text section holds the words and the settings that style them, side by side. It's hidden in Mosaic, which shows no text.

In Grid and Solo, select a picture (click it on the canvas or in the thumbnail strip) and type its Title and Caption in the fields at the top of the section; the file name above them tells you which picture you're labelling. Tab moves from Title to Caption. The text is rendered right into the export, at a size that scales with the canvas — so labels stay proportionate whether the composition is small or large.

Fan works differently. A rotated card's caption would swing out over its neighbours, so Fan skips per-image text and takes a single Title and Subtitle of its own instead, set into the open space the arc leaves beneath the cards. If that space is too tight, the canvas grows to make room rather than letting the type collide with the photos.

Control	What it does
Font	The typeface for titles and captions — Sans, Serif, or Round.
Size	Small, Medium, or Large. New documents start at Medium. The gap between a picture and its text scales with the type, so bigger text gets more room rather than crowding the artwork.
Color	Auto (picks a legible light or dark color from the backdrop) or a custom color.

In Solo mode, Backdrop and Color are set per image — they read Backdrop (This Image) and Color (This Image). Each picture uses the backdrop and text color set for Grid and Fan until you give it its own, so you can restyle one photo without touching the rest. Grid and Fan each render one flattened card, so those two controls apply to the whole thing at once instead.

Exporting

PicPile exports sharp PNGs. In Grid and Fan, Export… writes one composite picture. In Solo mode, the Export menu splits in two: Export Current… saves just the shot you're looking at, and Export All… writes every image in the pile — each framed and styled the same way — to a folder you choose in one pass.

Every export dialog includes a Width field: type the pixel width you want and the Height follows automatically, keeping the canvas's proportions (or, when exporting a whole Solo-mode pile with Auto framing, each image keeps its own proportions).

A Copy button next to Export puts the same rendered image straight on the clipboard — the composite in Grid or Fan, or the active shot in Solo — for pasting into another app without saving a file first.

Reach for a transparent backdrop (see Canvas) when the exported PNG needs to sit on another background — the transparency is preserved in both the export and the copy.

Documents

PicPile saves your work as native .picpile documents. Save a composition and reopen it later to keep tweaking the images, styling, framing, and text exactly where you left off — including any per-image backdrops and text colors set in Solo mode, and Fan's own title and subtitle.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`⌘V`	Paste image(s) from the clipboard.
`⌘R`	Rotate the selected image a quarter turn (Edit ▸ Rotate Selected Image).
Arrow keys	Move the selection between images.
`⌘Z` / `⇧⌘Z`	Undo / redo — covers styling, text, reordering, rotating, and removing images.

Accessibility

VoiceOver and Voice Control can reach every control. PicPile also follows Increase Contrast, Reduce Motion, and Differentiate Without Color from System Settings → Accessibility.

Languages

PicPile is localized into 11 languages and picks the right one automatically based on your System Settings → General → Language & Region preferences.

To pin PicPile to a specific language without changing system preferences, open System Settings → General → Language & Region → Applications, click the + button, and pick PicPile.

License

PicPile ships through two channels — pick the one that fits how you like to pay for software:

Direct download. Free to use, fully featured, right away — no time limit. After every 5th export, PicPile shows a reminder that a license is available. A one-time purchase (PicPile ▸ Buy License…) removes the reminder for good; enter your key from PicPile ▸ Enter License….
Mac App Store. Paid through Apple's standard pipeline — no separate license key.

Support

Questions, bug reports, or feature requests? Email ben.dansby@gmail.com and you'll get a reply, usually within a day or two.