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Photo Mosaics without software


nkuronen

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So I am a self taught photoshopper and I had a friend ask me to do cover art for his next album. He's just a small time local artist and had the pretty generic idea of a photo mosaic of his face made up of other pictures, but I don't believe in doing poor quality work. I'm a little lost on how to go about this project though. I know that I have to place photos of the same color on his face to build it up but I'm not sure how to start. All I can find for tutorials on the subject either use the same photo over and over or use overlay or something to make the photos appear to be the right color when they aren't actually. Or people just use software to do it for them. Can anyone help with either tips or a link to a tutorial or anything about how to organically make a photo mosaic in photoshop. I don't want to use software because he wants to make money off his album and I don't want to step on copyright infringements and I also think it looks stiff. Any tips??
 

IamSam

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Hi nkuronen and welcome to PSG.

I have spent some time tonight searching for a way to "organically" make a photo mosaic in Photoshop and I came up empty. While I think it could be done in Photoshop, I think it would be a project of astronomical proportion. You would need a massive image library that categorized each image on overall color value. Set up a grid overlaying the original image, the smaller the better, then choosing each image based on color, resizing to fit and fill a corresponding grid box. I can't imagine the time this could take.

I hope someone else chimes in with a better idea! Good luck!
 

Tom Mann

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I agree with Sam, and will hopefully reinforce the point I think he is making.

As you are "organically" (ie, manually) constructing any mosaic, you will come upon areas in the "target image" with specific RGB values. You then need to be able to go to your library of "elemental images" and find a suitable one, ie, one whose average R, G and B values are close to the R, G, and B values of the target image at that point.

So, let's roughly estimate the number of different individual elemental images (ie, the small ones) one would need to have in your library in order to adequately represent a reasonable range of different reds, greens, and blues in the "target" image that the mosaic is trying to reproduce.

As you know, 8 bit-per-channel JPGs do a very reasonable job of representing color images. An 8 bpc JPG can use 256 different values of R, 256 different values of G and 256 different values of B. To match this degree of color and tonal fidelity, your library of elemental images would need to contain at least 256 x 256 x 256 different pictures.

Obviously, this is a lot more than one would need to construct a recognizable overall image. My guess is that the absolute minimum bit depth one could get away with in such a mosaic and not have it look horrible is probably around 4 bits per channel, ie, 16 different values in each of the three channels. This implies that your library of elemental images needs to contain 16 x 16 x 16 (ie, 4096 ) appropriate elemental images. This is quite a large number, but, if one had enough time, energy, and good organizational skills, this wouldn't be out of the question.

The real problem arises because you said that you don't want to artificially change the color or brightness of any of the elemental images -- you want to use all "real" images. This means that you would need to find lots of images for the library whose average R, G and B values are extremely unlikely, eg, a "real" image whose average red value is between 0 and 15 (on a 256 scale), and has a nearly 0 average for the green and blue channels. Then, you would need to find another "real" image whose average red value is between 16 and 31, also with nearly 0 values in G and B, etc. etc. One would be very hard pressed to find such odd images.

Finding such unusual elemental images is precisely why most of the mosaic generation programs instead modify the brightness and colors of one or more base images in order to generate the needed range of colors and brightness in the base images.

I hope the above discussion helps you understand what is feasible when attempting something like this and why successful mosaic software works the way it does.

Cheers,

Tom
 
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nkuronen

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Thank you for your responses! I have downloaded a photo mosaic program and I'll see if it's usable. Obviously it is unreasonable to collect several thousand photos with values matching that of a face for a small project I have limited time for. Any feasible suggestions other than software that will help me with this undertaking? I just want to eliminate the monotony, stiffness, and choppiness that so many poor photo mosaics express. Thanks!
 

Tom Mann

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Some random thoughts:

a) I think it would be next to impossible to to take the monotonous, equal-sized, rectangular grid output from some low end mosaic software and attempt to make it less monotonous after the fact. I think it would be vastly better to use software that can produce non-monotonous mosaics right from the start.

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b) Did you happen to run into this software:
http://www.cfxsoftware.com/products/photomosaicoverview.html

On both their website, and another website ( http://athomewithtech.com/2012/12/23/what-photomosaic-software-is-best/ ) where the author used this software to create his own mosaic, the examples posted show that this software clearly is capable of quasi-random angles and sizes for the elemental cells. OTOH, I wasn't as impressed by the colors it produced compared to the work done by the company I mention below.

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c) Have you considered using a service to do the work instead of doing it yourself? If you count your own time, the quality-to-cost ratio might be better if done this way. On a quick search, THIS COMPANY seems to say quite a few of the right things, apparently has a significant numbers of satisfied customers, etc. Take a look at their thoughts on what constitutes a "true mosaic" ( http://www.picturemosaics.com/true/ ). Unfortunately, I didn't see any examples of, or mention of deviation of the cells from a rectangular grid, random cell sizes, etc. OTOH, on first glance, their examples looked better to me than those of cfxsoftware (discussed above). Maybe you should contact them to see if perhaps they can introduce these random elements, get an estimated price, etc.
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HTH,

Tom
 

Painterskip

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I'm pretty sure that it was that program from Mazaika that I tried a few years ago. Actually, it was the program called Mazaika and not PhotoJumble because I wanted to use only little square photos for the end result.

In spite of the fact that I only had maybe 100 or so photos, and the image that I wanted to paste them into was not exactly suitable, it still did a nice job. The only time consuming part was croping the 100 plus images to exact size squares. And I only had to do that because I didn't want the program to crop peoples heads off. So I basically had about 120 little portraits and the program inserted them into a shape, which was of another person....full body, not portrait.

I seem to recall the program crashing, but this was at least 3 or 4 years ago. But I think it's what you need, if I understand you correctly.
 

ibclare

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If you were to make the small images, correct color, etc., create a clippin mask, would that get you anywhere you need to be. Maybe use a displacement filter over the protrait and different blend modes to let some of the original face aspects show?

I am just guessing.
 

ibclare

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I tried it. DOesn't work. I think you want the mosaic so that it looks like a paper mache model?

Maybe if you have a sculptor make the head for you, you could do the composite in reality. I bet you have the skills for that.
 

dv8_fx

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upgift....

may I remind this is a help forum and not a place to advertise your services to solicit work and displaying your e-mail.....

If you wish to assist the person, outline to him how you achieve this.... is it through the use of another application or purely in Photoshop ..........
 

upgift

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sorry dv8_fx i didnt mean to advertises purposefully. Regarding the way i achieve it is through using both proprietary software & photoshop, but sorry i cant tell the exact steps in photoshop. Photoshop plays an major role in my mosaic works and it took a long time to develop & get the results i get, in fact i am still improvising it :)
 

upgift

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dv8_fx i would have understood if you had removed my earlier comment under the violation of advertising intent. But why cant ppl post image with their email ?
 

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