How to Create a Photo Mosaic
A step-by-step guide on how to make a photo mosaic using your computer and a program called Mazaika. http://www.mazaika.com Class Notes: Welcome to the class on how to make mosaics. A mosaic is a picture that is made up of many smaller pictures. Before computers, making a mosaic was a very difficult process, but now there are a number of different programs you can get for your computer that make it much easier. The program we are going to talk about today is called Mazaika. There are many different projects you can do with mosaics. I made one for my parents as a Christmas present of my sisters and me as we were growing up and made a mosaic of a portrait of them. Then I had it printed online. I also did one of the ESU 10 logo made up of smaller pictures of the employees that work at ESU 10. After you get the mosaic program installed, you need to create a library of pictures that you are going to use to make a mosaic of the larger picture. To get the best effect, it helps if you already have the pictures cropped how you want them. The best program I have found for doing that is a freeware program called Click to Crop. It works very well. There are many places where you can get pictures for your mosaic, such as the Internet, scanned-in pictures, or pictures from a digital camera. But, of course, the kind of pictures you need depends on what picture you want to use for your mosaic. For example, if you were going to make a mosaic of your school mascot, it would not make sense to make it out of little pictures of DVD covers. The more pictures you have for your mosaic, the better it will be. Going back to the example of the mosaic I made for my parents, I scanned in several thousand pictures of my sisters and me growing up, in addition to another couple thousand digital pictures I have taken. This made a very nice mosaic. But enough talk, let's make a mosaic! You can find the mosaic software that we are going to use today at http://www.mazaika.com Once you get the mosaic downloaded and installed, the first thing you need to do is make a new tile library. Go to File - New Library then select the place where you want to save the new library and name the library. Then select the directory of the pictures you want to use for your mosaic. Then, depending upon how you cropped your pictures, select the different tile properties, then click on the button Scan Images. Depending upon the number of pictures in your folder, this could take a while. When it is all done scanning, click on the Close button and you are ready to bring in the original image you want to make a mosaic of. Go to File - Open Source Image - and snag your picture. Next, select the grid size on the original picture. One thing to keep in mind is that if you get the tile pictures too big, the end mosaic won't look very nice. However, if you get the tile pictures too small, then you won't be able to see the individual tiles. It's a balance. It also depends on how many tiles you have made. A good picture needs at least 500 to 1,000 different tiles, but you can never really have too many picture tiles. The more the better. Once you create your grid, click Apply, pick a place to save the grid layout, then you will see your original picture on the screen. There are several things you can adjust, such as the distance between the tiles before they repeat and the number of times each tile can repeat. This, too, is a little bit of hit and miss. Just keep playing around with it until you see something you like. Once everything is good to go, click on Render Mosaic button on the menu on the left side of the screen and watch your mosaic come to life. Isn't it beautiful! When you think you have found a mosaic that you like, we need to save it. The program just figured out the mathematical placement of the pictures, now we need to save it so that all of the individual pictures can come together into one large picture so you can actually use it. Click on Save Mosaic button, right above the Render Mosaic button, and choose your DPI and your height and width. One thing to note is to make sure the Used Stored Thumbs checkbox is not checked. This way your picture will look a lot more detailed because it is actually going to go out and use the original images instead of just the thumbnail it scanned in. It makes it look a lot sharper. I would have at least a DPI of 150 or higher. Once you have that all set up, click on Save As button and select a file type and file name and watch it go. Depending upon the size of your picture, the DPI, the speed of your computer, be prepared to wait a very long time, especially if you are making a very big picture. The mosaic I made for my parents was 36" x 24", and it took about half an hour to compile on a Pentium 4 2.4. Have Fun!
A step-by-step guide on how to make a photo mosaic using your computer and a program called Mazaika. http://www.mazaika.com Class Notes: Welcome to the class on how to make mosaics. A mosaic is a picture that is made up of many smaller pictures. Before computers, making a mosaic was a very difficult process, but now there are a number of different programs you can get for your computer that make it much easier. The program we are going to talk about today is called Mazaika. There are many different projects you can do with mosaics. I made one for my parents as a Christmas present of my sisters and me as we were growing up and made a mosaic of a portrait of them. Then I had it printed online. I also did one of the ESU 10 logo made up of smaller pictures of the employees that work at ESU 10. After you get the mosaic program installed, you need to create a library of pictures that you are going to use to make a mosaic of the larger picture. To get the best effect, it helps if you already have the pictures cropped how you want them. The best program I have found for doing that is a freeware program called Click to Crop. It works very well. There are many places where you can get pictures for your mosaic, such as the Internet, scanned-in pictures, or pictures from a digital camera. But, of course, the kind of pictures you need depends on what picture you want to use for your mosaic. For example, if you were going to make a mosaic of your school mascot, it would not make sense to make it out of little pictures of DVD covers. The more pictures you have for your mosaic, the better it will be. Going back to the example of the mosaic I made for my parents, I scanned in several thousand pictures of my sisters and me growing up, in addition to another couple thousand digital pictures I have taken. This made a very nice mosaic. But enough talk, let's make a mosaic! You can find the mosaic software that we are going to use today at http://www.mazaika.com Once you get the mosaic downloaded and installed, the first thing you need to do is make a new tile library. Go to File - New Library then select the place where you want to save the new library and name the library. Then select the directory of the pictures you want to use for your mosaic. Then, depending upon how you cropped your pictures, select the different tile properties, then click on the button Scan Images. Depending upon the number of pictures in your folder, this could take a while. When it is all done scanning, click on the Close button and you are ready to bring in the original image you want to make a mosaic of. Go to File - Open Source Image - and snag your picture. Next, select the grid size on the original picture. One thing to keep in mind is that if you get the tile pictures too big, the end mosaic won't look very nice. However, if you get the tile pictures too small, then you won't be able to see the individual tiles. It's a balance. It also depends on how many tiles you have made. A good picture needs at least 500 to 1,000 different tiles, but you can never really have too many picture tiles. The more the better. Once you create your grid, click Apply, pick a place to save the grid layout, then you will see your original picture on the screen. There are several things you can adjust, such as the distance between the tiles before they repeat and the number of times each tile can repeat. This, too, is a little bit of hit and miss. Just keep playing around with it until you see something you like. Once everything is good to go, click on Render Mosaic button on the menu on the left side of the screen and watch your mosaic come to life. Isn't it beautiful! When you think you have found a mosaic that you like, we need to save it. The program just figured out the mathematical placement of the pictures, now we need to save it so that all of the individual pictures can come together into one large picture so you can actually use it. Click on Save Mosaic button, right above the Render Mosaic button, and choose your DPI and your height and width. One thing to note is to make sure the Used Stored Thumbs checkbox is not checked. This way your picture will look a lot more detailed because it is actually going to go out and use the original images instead of just the thumbnail it scanned in. It makes it look a lot sharper. I would have at least a DPI of 150 or higher. Once you have that all set up, click on Save As button and select a file type and file name and watch it go. Depending upon the size of your picture, the DPI, the speed of your computer, be prepared to wait a very long time, especially if you are making a very big picture. The mosaic I made for my parents was 36" x 24", and it took about half an hour to compile on a Pentium 4 2.4. Have Fun!