Possible make photo collage to make shape

I suppose you could type your text, create outlines from your letters, select groups of images, and align them to the character shapes. Then delete those original characters once the images are where you want them.

As far as I am aware there is no action in Photoshop or illustrator that will allow you to create a custom word photo collage with multiple images.

It may well be a case of positioning them manually.

I think Photoshop would your best bet as you would be able to position the photos quicker.

Please show an example of what you want to create.

You can create a clipping mask in AI or a mask or a clipping group in PSD to create a shape that will also mask out the part of the images that you don't want to show.

Create a basic clipping mask |

Reveal layers with clipping masks in Photoshop

When you talk about automatically align them, do you mean an action to bring them in on a grid or what are you hoping to do?