Hello!!
I am so excited to have have found your mosaic creator and have tried it out on a small scale and love the results and the ease of the program!!

However I am looking to create a 6' x 6' mosaic for an event, what are the best specs to successfully produce this size of a mosaic? I not very knowledgable when it comes to technical lingo and what is equivalent to what (inches vs. pixels, pixels per inch, etc.) so any 'lamemans terms' would be helpful to me! Any guidance on how to produce, save, print, specifications my computer needs, etc. would so appreciated.

Secondly...I am aware that I will have to upgrade in order to accommodate my 6' x 6' mosaic, so can you please inform me as to how it will work once I make a donation to you and how quickly I will be able to access the upgrade version!

Thanks so much....Lisa

Lisa,

If you set the Resolution parameter to 200 PPI or maybe 195 PPI (default is 300 PPI) the quality is still good and you don't need to upgrade to the professional version.
Else you can donate here http://www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic/donation/, with PayPal you will get immediately the professional version.
Set Mosaic size to 6' and add use a square sized image for the main image.
You can leave the other parameters as the default values or play with them, raising the number of tiles, selecting one of the various Patterns, and so on.
Once the mosaic is created you can print it in any shop that allows poster printing of a photo.

byee
Andrea

Hi again!

If I am creating the 'original' photo in PhotoShop, would it be best to set the canvas size to 6'x6' or whatever my desired finished mosaic size will be or can it be smaller (like 2' x 2' for the original to be made into a mosaic approx. 4.5' - 5' square)

Thanks,
Lisa

Lisa, The printing size of the main/original image is irrelevant. So a small size is ok. Just check that the size in pixels is at least 600 pixels in width/height (for a typical mosaic size).

Should I be creating my mosaic in PPI or DPI? Is one better to use if I will getting the mosaic printed professionally vs. on my own printer...this will be at least a 6'x6' mosaic.

When I create it in DPI the tile photos are clear when enlarged to view in 'actual size', however when create it in PPI the tile photos are extremely out of focus/unrecognizable when enlarged to view in 'actual size'. Can you please explain the difference?

Thanks again and I am loving my Pro version!
Lisa

In AndreaMosaic I use the formula 1 PPI = 6 DPI. So 300 PPI is exactly as having 1800 DPI.
The concept of PPI or DPI has a sense ONLY, but ONLY, when you print an image. If you have an image with a width of 1000 pixels and you print it at a size of 10 inch then you have 1000/10 = 100 pixels per inch = 100 PPI. If you print it at 20 inch then you will get 1000/20=50 PPI. If you print it at a small size of 2 inch the same image is printed at 1000/2 = 500 PPI.
DPI are dot per inch, it vary with the printing device. Even a screen monitor could be seen as a printer. On a monitor you have usually 3 dots for each pixel, Red, Green, Blue. For a inkjet printer you have more dots to reproduce a pixel color, 6 dots or even more. So for a monitor 1 PPI = 3 DPI. For a inkjet printer 1 PPI = 6 DPI or 12 DPI, depends on the printing settings and device.

So by changing the DPI or PPI value in AndreaMosaic what are you really changing? You are selecting the number of pixels. If you say Mosaic Size 10 inch and Resolution 300 PPI then the mosaic will have a size of 10*300 = 3000 pixels. Easy.

The reason why at a higher resolution (i.e. a higher mosaic pixel count) the tiles at 1:1 view where less in focus its because probably the mosaic has many pixels, more than the size of the original tiles each. For sure a higher PPI/DPI will give you a better mosaic when printing.
I suggest you to download the Beta Professional version, the resizing process was improved. It works well.

Andrea