How do I make digital collages?

How do big named companies make Photo Collages/Birth Announcements?

• I would like to know what software those big photo greeting card companies use to make their announcements. ie tiny prints. I have seen several smaller companies that have similar designs and I would love to know what they use and how they do it

• Answer:

  The large companies have templates set up to drop photos into when they are ordered. These templates are professionally designed and then just used over and over. You can set up your own templates in programs such as Photoshop. Photoshop uses the "Smart Object" technology that allows you to drop in photos save the set up and then replace the image contents. Not only that, but you can use copies of "Smart Objects" so that when you replace one of them the other copies are also replaced and that saves you tons of time when your album is large.