You can easily make art from your personal photographs by creating a digital photo mosaic. If you already have high resolution photographs on your computer, you already have what you need to get started. If you don’t, then just scan some of your personal photographs or take some pictures with your digital camera. Download the photos using a resolution of at least 1 megapixel to ensure that your finished photo mosaic will look its best.
PicArtia.com is one of the most popular sites where you can make a photo mosaic online. If you want to make your photo mosaic for free, but don’t want to install software on your computer, this is your best bet. The PicArtia site greatly simplifies the process of making mosaics with your own personal photos or with pictures you found online. The site also provides the images that will be used to create your mosaic. You can choose from pictures of animals, people, cars and places.
Paint Shop Pro is an inexpensive graphics software program that also has a mosaic feature. If you do a lot of image or photograph editing on your computer, Paint Shop Pro is a wise investment. If you don’t want to spend money, you can use GIMP, a free open-source image processing software program, to make your photo mosaic. If you use these graphics programs to edit your photo, your finished mosaic won’t be made up of individual images, but it will be separated into distinct tiles.
Make a Digital Photo Mosaic Online at PicArtia.com
Navigate to the PicArtia.com website. Select the animated “Start” button underneath the mosaic example picture. Click the “From Your Hard” tab to find an image on your hard drive. Click “Select Image” on the right. When you’ve found the image you would like to use for your mosaic, select “Upload.” Alternatively, you can also select the “From Internet” tab on the right to browse the web for pictures to use in your mosaic.
Click “Select Gallery” above the uploaded image. Select the type of pictures you would like to make up your mosaic. Then, under “Slice My Photo,” move the white and red buttons to the left or right to change the size of the mosaic cells. You can make the cells larger, but your mosaic picture will look clearer and more attractive if they’re smaller. Under “Cell Size” move the slider back and forth to change the size of the images that will fill the cells. The larger these images are, the better resolution your finished mosaic will have. Click “Create Your Mosaic.”
Enter your name and email address in the next field and click “Go.” In a few minutes, check your email for the message from PicArtia that your mosaic image is finished. Copy the secret code. Click the “Download My Mosaic” link on the PicArtia.com website. If the code doesn’t work, simply click the “Open My Mosaic” link in the email. If your mosaic doesn’t look right, you can quickly and easily create a new one using the same source image.
Make a Digital Photo Mosaic in GIMP Image Processing Software
Start GIMP. Click File > Open. Browse your hard drive for the picture you’d like to make into a mosaic. Click Filters > Distorts > Mosaic. Under “Tiling Primitives,” select Squares, Hexagons, Octagons and Squares or Triangles. Look in the window above for a preview of your mosaic picture. Move the top four tile sliders to the right to make the mosaic tiles larger, taller, spaced farther apart and less neat. Move them to the left to make the mosaic tiles smaller, shorter, spaced closer together and neater. Choose the next sliders to change the light direction and color variation.
On the right, select whether you would like antialiasing, color averaging, tile splitting, pitted surfaces and foreground or background lighting. Continue checking the preview window to see your changes. Click the move icon in the lower right hand corner of the preview window and drag your mouse to preview a different part of your image. Click “OK” when you are satisfied with your mosaic. Save your image with a new file name to preserve the original.
Make a Digital Photo Mosaic in Paint Shop Pro
Open Paint Shop Pro and click the Browse button in the toolbar. In Paint Shop Pro, this button appears like a file cabinet. Browse the folders and pictures until you find the one you’d like to use for your digital photo mosaic. Click Effects > Texture Effects. Then select either “Mosaic Antique” or “Mosaic Glass.” If you select “Mosaic Antique,” adjust the number of columns and rows on the left side, then alter the tile diffusion, grout width and grout diffusion. If you choose “Mosaic Glass,” change the glass curvature and edge curvature in addition to the other settings. Look at the preview above the settings controls to see the changes in your mosaic. Click the eye button to proof your photo mosaic in the full image window.
Using these steps, you can create as many digital mosaic pictures as you like. You can print your mosaics, put them on your website use them as desktop wallpaper on your computer.
