First off, thanks Andrea for a very valuable piece of software!!

I have played around with a few options and is fairly straight forward and have created some good mosaics however I'd like a bit of advice on the following if I may?

As it is my son's first birthday I wanted to create a mosaic for my partner made up of every photo we have of him from 0-1yrs old.

The main image will be of him on his actual birthday (which was yesterday).

I'm stuck on whether I should choose a canvas print or a large poster/photo print, cost isn't that much of an issue however I'd hate to pay £60 or so on a canvas for it to turn out bad. Thoughts?

I have 1820 images which I would like to use all of them at least once, I have found this option to do this under the more options page right?

I don't have a problem of flipping or rotating images in pursuit of a better quality mosaic so all boxes are selected on this.

Is 50% colour change a pretty standard value? Again I have no problem of altering colours in pursuit of quality.

The 2 questions that really confuse me are the following:

1. As most of my pictures are of portrait orientation would a 1L, 4P pattern be best?
2. What size for the tiles? The software states minimum 0.5" or 1.5cm. Is that in terms of total area or length or what? Would going smaller than that be reasonable as I'd like it to look good from afar so that people are drawn in to it but wondering if 0.5" is bigger than necessary? I will probably print the canvas or photo at 20x25", 25x30" or maybe just A3?

Help appreciated

Thanks

Hi

- Personally I would not print each tile with a height/width of less than 0.4" / 1 cm. But this is a personal choice. After you created a mosaic you can always print a small piece of it (cut out a piece of the mosaic) and see if the resulting size of each tile is what you want. More tiles you have better will be the final mosaic.
- So for a better quality I would rise a bit the number of tiles (i.e. raise the size of the mosaic). 50% Color Change is already relatively high.
- Yes, if you have a lot of Portrait images I would use one of these patterns: Portrait, Portrait (2 rows), Parquet (1L 3P), Mixed (1L 4P), Mixed2 (1L 4P). You can even remove Rotate 90 degrees, maybe if the photos aren't rotated at all they will look better for you.
- If you want to use each image at least once, and you have like 1800 images then make a mosaic of at least 3000 tiles. Try to make a mosaic with/without the option "Use all tiles" (in More Options). And compare the two resulting mosaics.

byeee
Andrea

P.S.: Happy Birthday for your son and family

Thank's for a fast reply.

I will stick with 0.4"/1cm as you obviously have far more experience with these things.

Rotate 90deg isn't a problem for me but I'll try it like you say as I can always compare them.

Thanks very much once again

I suggest you to print a small piece of the mosaic, it cost you few cents only. You may like tiles at 0.3" or 0.4" or 0.5" or perhaps 1"!

how do I print small pieces? Say I wanted to make a 6x4" print?

Make a normal mosaic, then with a Paint program extract a piece of it. Then you can print that piece so that each tile has the requested size.

If I wanted to print this but with say a 6x4" original image put at the bottom left hand corner how would Ido this?

After you create the mosaic using a Photo Editor program (gimp, paint.net, etc) you can place a copy of the original image somewhere in the mosaic.
Is this what you wanted?

yes, but then how would I ensure this will equal 6x4" say? and wont this then displace several of my images?

or do you reckon on a canvas there's little point in having the original image put in?

Also if I am creating a 29x34" canvas and I have set each tile at 1.3cmx1cm (as 1cm is the min you advised) do I need to play about with the quality?

Also how can I ensure the final image is sub 20meg so that I can email it...?

With 300 PPI the quality is very high. To solve the 20 megabyte problem you can do one of these:
- open the produced mosaic file with a paint program and save it to another file with a higher compression ratio until you reach 20 megabyte. This allows you to try different compression ratios without recreating the mosaic each time. One freeware that do this is http://www.faststone.org. image viewer.
- split the mosaic in a few pieces (but I don't know if the printing provider will help you printing a single image from it)
- use some free uploader services instead of sending the email.

byee
Andrea

Andrea,

After all this the mosaic I'm trying to replicate is coming out quite bad, the only solution is to not select all photos which gives hundreds of duplicates (which goes against the principle of using all my photos from 0-1yrs old) or increase colour change to 80% and change overall image quality at expense of tiles.

I played about with just using a white background which looks great and also allows the images to be bigger as I have just stuck with 1800ish

I was thinking doing something like this:


although I think the 1 is a bit cheesy, so I am going to try with a silhouette of a baby just to get a general outline but keep colour as original or would a 30% change be alright?



how would one make a silhoueette of an actual photo of my boy? As I'd ideally like to use the shape of my boy as opposed to a random baby silhouette I found on the net.

Set the "Use same tile up to" to a low value for example 2 or 3.
OR raise the duplicate spacing to 5 or even 10.
This will reduce the duplication ratio and it will raise the number of different tile images that are used. Then with such parameters try to make another mosaic with [x] use all tiles.

About the Baby shape: To use a photo of your son you can create a shape with a paint program. there are some filters that reduce the number of colors. Try various filters. But you can also choose a image of your son to replicate as a mosaic.

With only a shape as a mask I suggest you to use a low value for the Color Change parameter. Like 15% or 10%.

thanks very much, I'll have a play when he's in bed. Must order tomorrow for the partners birthday

Andrea

This is the image/shape I want to use:



How should I edit this picture to get a 'random' mosaic following the general shapes as opposed to colours?

I feel this pic symbolises love and the three of us as a family

You can use the image as it is. Just don't use a high Color Change parameter. values around 10%-15% should be ok.
You can modify this shape in the colors, replacing the red with a rainbow for example. just my 2 cents.

how would I do that? modifying colours...

I have just downloaded gimp

I would also like to add a 1" black border around it to make it stand out from the cream walls

If you have Windows you can try Paint.NET, maybe it's easier to use than GIMP.

Paint programs have a bucket tool that is used to fill an area. Usually in the Bucket tool options you can select a gradient of two colors or directly a rainbow.
Then select the white area of the image, invert the selection and at last apply the bucket-rainbow over it.
But if you never did something like that it may will take some time to learn.

You can add a border using a similar feature, select all the white, invert the selection, then expand it by some pixels and then paint with black the resulting selection. But the problem is that AndreaMosaic will have some troubles trying to replicate the border using your photos. You can also just draw manually a border with a pen color, it can be approximate. AndreaMosaic in any case tries to replicate it.