How to creat collage with faded edges?

Pages v10.3.9 does not provide a gradient edged Picture Frame effect to produce images with faded edges. Pages '09 v4.3 had this frame, but it won't run on Big Sur.

Your options are:

1. You will have to use Pages '09 v4.3 on Mojave or older on another Mac to apply the Picture Frame and use the blurred edge frame.
   1. Copy to the clipboard and then launch Preview and choose New from Clipboard.
   2. You now have a PDF representation of your faded edge image from Pages '09 and you can save export it as .png, or PDF.
   3. Drag and drop the PDF onto your Pages v10.3.9 document after transferring the PDF to Big Sur
2. Use a dedicated Vector graphics tool that allows you to place a gradient boundary around the image edges, and export these as .png, or PDF content for placement in Pages v10.3.9.
   1. You can trial Affinity Designer from their website, and if inclined, purchase it from the Mac App Store.

What we used to be able to achieve with Pages '09 v4.3:

Even if you use a specialised image editing application to apply the soft edges, like this:

... the transparency in the originals will be displayed as white in Pages if you overlap them to make a collage:

Leaving an unattractive hard edge.

If you want effects like this:

Then you will definitely need a specialised image editing application to create your collage.

I reckon for this sort of job Affinity Photo would be a better option. Same deal as Designer (free trial, purchase from Mac App Store or from Affinity's own website). Designer has a pixel-editing 'persona' but it's more geared towards vector graphics - Photo has more of the image-editing bells and whistles.

I agree. Designer can do vector or raster, but Photo may have a better crack at this.