Capital Treasures

This visual technique still amazes me… The art of computer-generated mosaics of pictures made from tiled pictures is fairly new and has somewhat been overdone. Examples of the art are available in a book titled Photomosaics, a compilation of images created by computer programs written by Robert Silvers. Silvers was a MIT student and is now president of a company that makes logos and illustrations for individuals, corporations, and publications. The authors combined the NASA term “photo mosaic” to coin “photomosaic” to apply to the process and the result. The book consists of over two dozen such images. Many of the images are portraits, including renderings of the faces of Jesus Christ, George Washington, van Gogh, Abraham Lincoln, Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Bill Gates, Madonna, Al Gore, and Yoda. Each image is a mosaic of related images. Lincoln’s portrait consists of Civil War photos; Elvis is composed of postage stamps; Madonna is a montage of material things; Bill Gates is made of money.

The photomosaic software begins with a scanned image of what is to be recreated in the mosaic format. Which means that the final pictures are not really computer-created art; they are computer-replicated art wherein the replication is an approximation of the original, the interesting part being that the approximation uses hundreds of subject-related images. The software divides the original image into tiled regions and assigns properties to each region with respect to color, brilliance, shape, and so on. Then the software searches its database of contributing images, images that are candidates to become tiles in the final product. The characteristics of each database image are compared to those of each tiled region in the original picture. This process is processor intensive; the images are not of equal dimensions, they overlap, and the matching algorithm has to pan the candidate tile images around looking for a good match. The software needs high-power hardware and lots of storage for the typically 2000 images that the programs analyze to compose a single mosaic.

Creating a mosaic is an iterative process involving the computer’s output and manual refinement and tuning of the image by a person. The hand and eye of the artist are not made obsolete by the software; human interaction is a necessary part of the process.

Robert Silvers runs a website/company called Runaway Technology that creates fine art and is a creative service for this technique. You could purchase their services or hire them for some production work; however, there are quite a few programs available for the home market that can take your images and analyze them to create your own photomosaic photo.

ezMosaic has a several versions that output to larger formats if needed and the Andrea Mosaic bundle has one that is “free” – both of these software packages come prepacked with a huge library of images to pull from… although it would be more fun to use your own library of personal and family photos.