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 comes two ways. The download from bendansby.com/apps/picpile is a notarized .dmg — open it and drag PicPile.app to your Applications folder. The Mac App Store version installs and updates the usual way.

Requires macOS 13 Ventura or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel. PicPile is a universal binary that launches instantly. 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 or individual

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

Grid. Every image is piled into one styled card and exported as a single composite picture.
Individual. 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 Individual mode.

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

Styling the canvas

The inspector controls the look of the whole composition. Dial in:

Control	What it does
Padding	The margin around the artwork.
Spacing	The gap between shots (Grid mode only).
Corner	Corner rounding on the images.
Effect	A soft shadow or glow behind the artwork, or none.
Backdrop	None (transparent), a custom color, or a picture of your own — cropped to fill behind the pile.
Text	Auto (picks a legible light or dark color from the backdrop) or a custom color for titles and captions.

Set the backdrop to transparent 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.

In Individual mode, Backdrop and Text are set per image — style one photo differently from the rest without leaving the mode. Grid mode's card is one flattened composite, so those two controls apply to the whole thing at once instead.

Framing

In individual mode, each shot can keep its own aspect ratio, or be letterboxed to a fixed frame:

Auto. Fit each shot to its own aspect.
Letterbox to 1:1, 4:3, 16:10, or 9:16 (a tall frame for Stories/Reels-style crops), backdrop showing through any gaps.

A live preview shows exactly what you'll export as you change the frame, so there's no guesswork before you commit.

Titles & captions

Give any image a title and a caption. Click a photo to edit its text inline; Tab moves from the Title field 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. Text color follows the Text control in Styling the canvas.

Exporting

PicPile exports sharp PNGs. In Grid mode, Export… writes one composite picture. In Individual 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 Individual-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 grid composite in Grid mode, or the active shot in Individual mode — for pasting into another app without saving a file first.

Reach for a transparent backdrop (see Styling the 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 Individual mode.

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.

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.