The Geometry of Image Collages: Layouts, Aspect Ratios, and the Math Behind Grid Systems

I needed to create a social media header image last year -- five product screenshots arranged in a single 1200x630 image for Open Graph previews. I opened a graphics editor and started dragging images around. Thirty minutes later, it still looked off. The spacing was inconsistent. One image was slightly taller than its neighbors. The gaps between images were visually uneven even though they were numerically identical. The problem was not my eye. The problem was that I was treating collage layout as an art problem when it is actually a geometry problem. Why naive grid layouts fail The simplest approach to a collage is a uniform grid: divide the canvas into equal cells and place one image per cell. A 2x3 grid on a 1200x600 canvas gives you six cells of 600x200 each. This works only if all your images have the same aspect ratio as the cells. A 600x200 cell has a 3:1 aspect ratio. If your source images are 16:9 (1.78:1) or 4:3 (1.33:1), they will not fit without cropping or letterboxing. C