Montage is accessible from VSCO studio, allowing the option to start from scratch or to preselect images and video already edited in VSCO. “We feel like it’s more of a play space than a traditional editor and we’re seeing that in how people use it, which is really exciting.” “We really want this to be a place for people to play and experiment,” said Maggie Carson Jurow, VSCO’s lead designer on the project. Montage could even be used as a more traditional video editor by adding new videos to each scene. The open-ended design and focus on mixed media allows Montage to create any number of different projects, from photo slideshows outside the usual same-old templates, to mixed media art pieces. Scenes are where that PowerPoint feel comes in - each scene is like a slideshow slide of photos, videos, and shapes. Each scene is a single canvas housing those photos and videos, and creatives can choose how long each scene lasts, as quick as 250 milliseconds. Users can create a double exposure from a photo and a video instead of two photos, or build a collage of both photos and videos, for example. Using what VSCO describes as a freeform interface that favors gesture controls, those layers can be arranged in any number of ways, or layered on top of each other and blended with an opacity tool. Montage has the layers of a high-end photo editor, allowing users to layer photos and videos on top of each other. Canvases can be square, vertical, or horizontal.
Creatives start with a blank canvas, instead of stitching videos together on a timeline, then layer in photos, videos, and shapes to different scenes. The VSCO tool feels more like a love child between Photoshop, iMovie, and PowerPoint than a standard video editor. While the result is a video file, Montage is of a mashup of several different types of apps. Announced on Wednesday, March 4, Montage is an open-ended multimedia tool that allows creatives to mix photos and videos together inside VSCO, a popular photo and video editing app. VSCO has a new video editing tool - except Montage isn’t exactly a video editor, or a photo editor, or anything that fits neatly into a predefined box.