When choosing images to use for a photo mosaic the fist choice is the one to select the main image, the base and main building block of your mosaic.
Things to consider when making your choice
One thing to have in mind before making a selection is the size of the mosaic piece you are creating, having an idea as to the size of the mosaic will help guide the features you need in your main image. it's also good to have in your mind a location and how the mosaic will be viewed.
Size is important to be thinking about at this stage as it has an impact on the number of tiles and the viewing distance can also impact in this decision making process.
As a general rule of thumb we try to keep tile images larger than 12mm or 1/2" as it becomes quite difficult to make out the tile images if you go smaller. The idea is to be able to see the tile images when you're closer to the piece and have them less visible / blend into the main image at a distance (more closely representing the main image).
So as the mosaic image gets larger we end up using more tile images, you can also start to increase the size of the tiles as you are generally viewing larger pieces from further away. This is an artistic decision and a balance to get the right feel for the piece that works with forming a nice mosaic, a good read on the tile images and also a good read on the overall main image, we're after a nice photo-mosaic and not a pixelated version of our main image.
As we're limited on the tile size you can imagine that for small scale mosaics you can end up with a very small amount of tiles. This puts a huge demand / importance on the quality match of the tiles to the crop area of the main image. (The main image is cut up into the individual tile images so for each tile we're matching a tiny crop area of the main image as closely as possible) To make this kind of mosaic work you really need to have a very large tile image library to maximise the best fit of the tile images between 5k-20k for example. So for this reason it's harder to make a good looking mosaic from smaller number of tiles than larger number of tiles and still retain a good representation of the main image we're matching.
The sizes we generally deal with for mosaics we can use a smaller tile library but it's still important to try and understand the detail that can be captured within the tile resolution available. For smaller mosaics we'd recommend going with something like a single full face crop image where the whole tile count is focused where it's needed on the face to try and retain the main details. As you go larger you can move to something more like an upper body & face crop or maybe a couple of faces. Once we move to the larger sizes you could have resolution to try and go for more people or more full body images. Think about the eyes or mouth within a portrait, ideally we'd like to have a number of tiles over this area to try and capture the shape & some detailing from the main image. If the details in the main image are sub tile size it's almost impossible to capture a good representation without having a huge variety of tiles to match against.
The perfect picture?
Now we have a size in mind and know the type of framing / detail that works best for that size/resolution of tiles we can start to now find that perfect image.
When choosing your main image try and keep a couple of things in mind that will help you find an image that lends itself well for use as a mosaic source.
Try to have good tonal range and contrast in the image, overly dark or light images don't work well and limit the choice of tiles. You also want some details so washed out images also don't tend to work as well.
Try and keep broad areas of detail, lots and lots of fine details cannot be captured well by the tile images and will be lost.
To try and focus the details on important areas like the subjects face try and have plain or soft defocused backgrounds to help isolate your subject.
Choose an image that compliments your tile image library, it's great having a main image of someone wearing a large red hat & top but not if you only have a tile images of nature that's made entirely of images predominantly green & blue.
Thats it.
Congratulations you have your main image selected and you have found a good selection of tile images that fit the style, colour and feel of the main image. You now have all you need to get started on your mosaic. When creating your mosaic through MyPhotoFusion we'll happily help you fine tune your selection and give any feedback on image selection / composition / framing etc to help get the best result possible from you mosaic at the desired resolution.
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