how join small pictures in matrix form into one big picture?

hi,

pls pls pls help. i would like to join say 20pics of same format say .jpeg of diff size (small ones of 20-30kb) into one big picture.

but i dont need a panaromic view. i want it in matrix form. say 5 by 4 matrix form.

pls help, suggest some good software pls. pls dont suggest big ones like photoshop n all.. i tried it but its time taking n need expertise.

pls help.

thanks.

well photoshop is an excelletn program with a bit of practice but you could use MS Paint which come with windows and is under start > programs > accessories

Please reconsider using photoshop, it has a great feature that might be just what you need:

Photoshop CS (8), Photoshop CS2 or Photoshop CS3 can be used (I've tried it only in cs3 though):

1. Open Photoshop, go to File>Automate>Photomerge
2. Select Interactive Layout, then click Browse and load all the pictures you need, press OK
3. Give photoshop some time to load all of the pictures, you'll experience a lot of flickering as Photoshop is doing the loading at high speed. You'll know when it's done with loading when a new window appears.
(If a message saying Some images could not be automatically aligned pops up, press OK)
4. All of your images are located on top of that window, and are draggable.
Now it's up to you to drag each one in the empty space below and arrange them. When done, press ok, wait a bit for photoshop to arrange it like you have, and then simply go to File>Save As. (don't forget to choose .jpeg from the Format menu)
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This may be a bit slow process as you have to manually arrange the pictures but believe me, considering that the alternative would be creating a new empty file, and copy-pasting picture by picture and placing it, this is really about as fast as it gets.
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Or if you want, you can zip all the pictures, upload them (to www.rapidshare.com for example) and let me do it for you.