A photomosaic is a fairly common technique in poster presentation. Though there are some instances when this is over done, or done poorly, the technique is still something to marvel at.

The concept of a photo mosaic is to represent a photo as a set of smaller photos. Instead of pixels, there would be a large number of pictures representing relative large pixels. There have been several good instances of movie posters which have used this to good effect including the movie poster for “The Truman Show.”

In creating a photo mosaic, there are several tutorials on the web, including one from Engadget. The important thing to remember is that you only need a few hundred pictures of your own. Preferably these should have a full spectrum of colors. The main picture is, in effect, blown up as pictures are used to recreate the image. This would result in a large picture (with a large file size). It would be good to view for a webpage, for instance, or for printing as a poster.

For best results, the tiles should be of one topic only. There was once a photo mosaic of Bill Gates made up of logos of companies which Microsoft has acquired, owned or competed against. The tiles serve as a sub-topic to the photo-mosaic. For instance, a portrait could be made into a photo-mosaic using other potraits of the same person, taken over his lifetime. A poster like this could be a good birthday present, if you have an archive of pictures.

The software used, AndreaMosaic, is a credit-ware program. It means that if you use it, you have to attribute the software used. It is also relatively easy to use. It can also capture frames from a movie. You can use a home movie, for instance, and the software can capture individual frames for use in a photo mosaic.

Source: AndreaMosaic.