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When you look at a mosaic from a distance, you see one big image, but as you zoom in, it becomes clear that it's not just a single, large picture but rather a collection of small, separate images. Click on the one below to see what I mean.
Mazaika is a nifty software program that creates such mosaics. It's a photomosaic tool that creates pictures made of other pictures. Based on the distribution of colors and shades throughout an image (a photograph, for instance), it reconstructs the image by automatically substituting separate small pictures that have similar color values for each area of the original picture. These tiny substitute images can be complete pictures themselves, but with a color and overall tonal value that corresponds to that of the area of the original being replaced. Naturally, the larger the collection of reference images, the greater the probability of finding a reference picture that's very similar in value, producing a better final result.
You probably have collections of digital photos on your computer yourself that would serve as reference material. Such as pictures of relatives, children, colleagues, pets, trips, holidays, digital family albums, etc. Mosaics developed from such bits of memoirs can make a very personal creation. These would make an ideal gift for a family celebration. But an interesting mosaic can also be made from completely abstract figures, like windows icons or the frames of a favourite film. Anything goes, and the bigger the database, the better. Using Mazaika, you can make professional looking mosaic pictures from almost any kind and type of image files. You can use even simple icon files (size 32x32) to create very impressive mosaic pictures. If you have a digital camera, you can use your own pictures as tiles. If you don't have enough image files - you could download some of his image collections. You can even manually change every single tile in the finished mosaic, if you don't like it and substitute another.
The program was created by
Boris A. Glazer from Ekaterinburg in Russia. His main business is
databases, and his hobby is graphics design. Mazaika is shareware and
combines the graphics databases and a program of image recognition. The alpha
version of the program was written in 1999 and continues to be developed.
A free 30-day trial version can be downloaded from his website, BG_ASCII and
Mazaika. Also on his site, you'll find a variety of
tile collections and a large gallery of ready-made mosaics. Would you
believe his tile collections include: beer bottle labels; a video cassette
cover collection; landscapes; a Santa made of Christmas postcards; old soviet
Christmas, New Years, and Santa postcards; and Christmas greeting cards (you
could make your own Christmas card this year this way)? He also has a
collection of 3000+ amateur cat photos (every pic is 48x48 pix or 170x170px) to
use with Mazaika, as he has done to create a cats wallpaper.
Now
you can turn your cat photo into an artistic bunch of little squares, each
with its own image within it.
Boris has generated the cat mosaics here for you to see. Click on the thumbnails to be taken to a close-up version, where you can more easily see the individual components. Thanks Boris.