LyteByte

A photographic mosaic picture is usually made of hundreds and thousands of other photos, which acts like an individual pixel, to make a final image which resembles one particular photo of your choice. In simple words, you give the collection of photo and a final image, set the parameters, wait for some time and you get a picture which has all the other photos embedded inside. If the resolution is high, you can zoom in to see the other photos.

This makes up a perfect gift for valentine! Put all the pictures and photos from your childhood until now and that reflects your love. Best of all you can make it for free and all that you need is some patience and time at hand. You can also print it as a big size photo, put it in a frame and gift it.

So how do you make photographic mosaic picture for free?
There are lots of free software that you can get on the net. There are two types, one is web based and another is desktop version. My suggestion is use the earlier one, if you don’t have good amount of memory on your computer. Also usually you don’t have the choice to upload all your photo collection (esp if you have thousands of them). You just give the final image that you want and the software uses its own photo collection, which defeats the purpose of putting all your memories into a single photo! There is one exception here, mosaickr, which allows using all your photo collection from flickr. So if you have your pictures on flickr, that maybe the best way to do it. For the rest, for good quality and control, the desktop version maybe the best one.

Free Desktop Version of Mosaic Software
The main advantage of the desktop version of this software is that it allows more photos to be put on the mosaic, gives higher quality mosaic picture with high resolution (Imagine a picture with around 50 Million Pixels and more), gives a higher control on the number of duplicates, minimum distance between duplicated tiles, number of tiles in a row, change resolution and quality which changes the size of the final image.

The best software to create photo mosaic that I have found so far are all shareware except for Andrea Mosaic. This software wizard comes with lots of good features and also come with a handy manual for all the features. It even allows creating a mosaic picture from a video where pictures are extracted from the clip at regular interval.

Steps to make a mosaic picture using AndreaMosaic
When you install andreamosaic, it comes with a very detailed manual. But the steps are simple.

First, put all the pictures in a folder or multiple folders within a directory. Click on Find Tiles under step 1. Click on create collection. Browse to the folder where you have saved all your photos and give a name to AndreaMosaic Image Collection and click on save (This allows the software to go through all the photos and store information about them in this file). Now it will browse through all the pictures to find information about them and save. Click on close and come back to the main window.

On Step 2, Change features according to your need like, Width of Mosaic, Number of tiles per row, Width of tile, thickness of black like around every tile, Minimum distance between duplicated tiles, number of duplicate tiles, modify image for better final image, algorithm to use etc. When you change the features, just make sure the status is All parameters are correct.

From Step 3, load the picture that you want your final image should look like using add image and click Create the Mosaic. Now all that you need is patience and wait for it to work on. The time may vary depending on how big the final image is and what is the memory of your computer.

Other features of AndreaMosaic:
Other cool features of this software is to create very big mosaic’s of up to 50 Megapixel using its image splitter and joiner, mosaic with very few tiles, mosaic from video, use a maskfile etc.

Collection of Other Mosaic Softwares:
Mazaika – Shareware
Imosaic – Freeware
Mosaic.net – Freeware + Opensource
Mosaic Creator – Shareware
PictureMedley – Freeware
Rich Mosaic – Freeware

Update: If you are planning to buy photo printer, read my article on ‘what to look for when you buy photo printer? – A Buying Guide‘