Introduction

AndreaMosaic is a little program for to create mosaics made with photographs. To create such kind of mosaic you need a collection of images to use for the tiles of the mosaic and you also need an image to use for the original, as a matrix for the mosaics. Then you can set the parameters of the program for to create very different kind of mosaics.

Original Image	Mosaic with 49 Tiles

Main Screenshot of AndreaMosaic

Your first photographic mosaic

1. Create a collection of Images

Let’s see how to create step by step your first mosaic. First of all you need a Directory where to story all the images to use as tiles of the mosaic. You can use Windows Explorer for to do this or also any other program. The images have to be JPG files, it is the most used format for photographs. You can also place the images in subdirectories for to organize better your images.

The next step is to tell AndreaMosaic where is the collection of images to use. The program will then analyze all the images and the result will be stored in an AMC File (Andrea Mosaic Collection). This file contain the basic information of every image (the name of the image, the size, in which directory/subdirectoy it is stored)

1. Execute AndreaMosaic
   
2. Press the button FindTiles
   
3. In the new window that appears press the button Create Collection...
   

4. In the next window you have to select the directory where you saved all your Images. Then write a name for your collection and press the button Save.
   
5. Now AndreaMosaic will analyze all the JPG files that are in the same directory and all the subdirectories. You have to wait that the program will reach 100%. You can cancel the process by pressing the button Close.
   
6. When the program reached 100% then you can close the window with the button Close. Now the creation is complete. You need to do this only the first time. In the future when you use the program then you can use the button Load Collection... for to load an existing AMC file. In this example whe have 2208 images in our collection.
   

2. Set the parameters of the Mosaic

After creating the Image collection (or loading an existing one), it is necessary to set all the parameters of the mosaic. But for your first experiment you can leave the default values. Later with more experience and after reading the chapter ‘The Parameters of AndreaMosaic ‘ you can try different values.

3. Select the Original Image

The third step is to choose what image you want to use for the Matrix of the mosaic. The program will then create a mosaic as close as possible to this original image.

1. Press the button Add Image
   
2. In the next window choose an image (a JPG file) to use as the matrix. If your image is in another format, for example Bitmap BMP, then you can use any graphic program to save it in JPG. After the selection press the button Open.
   

Note: You can also Drag&Drop a Image file from Windows Explorer directly to AndreaMosaic.

4. Create the Mosaic

The last step is to create the mosaic.

1. You only have to press the button Create the Mosaic’s.
   
2. Now you need only a little patience. Especially if you have many images in your collection (more than 10000) or if you want to create a mosaic with many tiles (more than 5000). In that case the process can take many minutes. While creating the mosaic you can see the details of the process. In this example: our image collection is made with 2208 images. The final mosaic will contain 529 tiles. The size of the final mosaic will be 3578x2691 pixels (enough for a normal print). The size of the average tile will be 156x117 pixels. The current original image is “C:\AndreaMosaic\MyPhoto.jpg”. The final mosaic will be saved into the file “C:\AndreaMosaic\MyPhoto Mosaic.jpg”. As you can see the mosaic will be saved in the same directory of the original image with the suffix Mosaic.jpg:

3. At the end of the creation you can see a window with a preview of the mosaic. But I suggest to use a graphical program to open the mosaic and view all its details: