Photomosaic
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A photographic mosaic or photomosaic is a picture (usually a
photograph A photograph (also known as a photo, or more generically referred to as an ''image'' or ''picture'') is an image created by light falling on a photosensitivity, photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor. Th ...
) that has been divided into tiled sections, usually equal sized, each of which is replaced with another photograph that matches the target photo.Cartwright (2007) p.102 quote: Photographic mosaic, also known as Photomosaic, a
portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.
of photo and mosaic, is a picture that is divided into small sections. When viewed as a whole, it appears to be one image, when in fact the image is made up of hundreds or even thousands of smaller images.
When viewed at low magnifications, the individual
pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...
s appear as the primary image, while close examination reveals that the image is in fact made up of many hundreds or thousands of smaller images. Most of the time they are a computer-created type of montage. There are two kinds of mosaic, depending on how the matching is done. In the simpler kind, each part of the target image is averaged down to a single color. Each of the library images is also reduced to a single color. Each part of the target image is then replaced with one from the library where these colors are as similar as possible. In effect, the target image is reduced in resolution (by
downsampling In digital signal processing, downsampling, compression, and decimation are terms associated with the process of ''resampling'' in a multi-rate digital signal processing system. Both ''downsampling'' and ''decimation'' can be synonymous with ''co ...
), and then each of the resulting pixels is replaced with an image whose average color matches that pixel. In the more advanced kind of photographic mosaic, the target image is not downsampled, and the matching is done by comparing each pixel in the rectangle to the corresponding pixel from each library image. The rectangle in the target is then replaced with the library image that minimizes the total difference. This requires much more computation than the simple kind, but the results can be much better since the pixel-by-pixel matching can preserve the resolution of the target image.


History

* 1973
Leon Harmon Leon D. Harmon (1922–1983) was a researcher in mental/neural processing, particularly regarding vision, who worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated. Harmon started his career as a radio serviceman and electronics hobbyist. In 1950, ...
publishes ''The Recognition of Faces''. It is illustrated with a very pixelated version of the portrait of
Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War ...
in the 5-dollar bill. * 1974-1976
Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...
paints two versions of ''Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at a distance of 20 meters is transformed into the portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko)''. The gray blocks in Harmon's portrait are substituted by square-shaped subpictures forming the image of a nude
Gala Dalí Gala Dalí (born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, Елена Ивановна Дьяконова; – 10 June 1982), usually known simply as Gala, was the wife of poet Paul Éluard and later of artist Salvador Dalí, who were both prominent in s ...
looking through a window. * 1977 Dalí prints a lithograph '' Lincoln in Dalivision'' based in his previous paintings. * 1993 Joseph Francis, working for R/Greenberg Associates in Manhattan, is believed to be the inventor of the modern-day computer-generated colour image versions. His ''Live from Bell Labs'' poster created in 1993 used computer-themed tile photographs to create a mosaic of a face (
Ryszard Horowitz Ryszard Horowitz (born May 5, 1939) is a Polish-born American photographer recognized as a pioneer of special effects photography that predates digital imaging. Early life Horowitz was born in Kraków, Poland on May 5, 1939. Four months later, b ...
/ Photography and Art Direction, Robert Bowen/ Digital Artist). He went on to create a mosaic for ''Animation Magazine'' in 1993, which was repeated in ''Wired Magazine'' (November 1994, p. 106). Francis has said on his "History of Photo Mosaics" webpage that his interest in developing these techniques further was in part stimulated by the work of artist
Chuck Close Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealism, photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits ...
. * 1994
Dave McKean David McKean (born 29 December 1963) is an England, English artist. His work incorporates drawing, painting, photography, collage, found objects, digital art, and sculpture. McKean has illustrated works by authors such as S. F. Said, S.F. Said, ...
creates an image for DC Comics, a mosaic of a face made from photos of faces, although this is believed to be created manually using Photoshop. * 1994 Adam Finkelstein and Sandy Farrier create a mosaic of
John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the first Roman Catholic and youngest person elected p ...
from parts of Marilyn Monroe pictures. The result was displayed in the Xerox PARC Algorithmic Art Show in 1994. * 1994 Benetton: AIDS - Faces mosaic. Over one thousand young peoples' portraits from all over the word computer-processed spell out the word AIDS. * 1995 The '' Gioconda Sapiens'', a face with ten thousand faces, was presented to the public in April 1995 (Spain, Domus museum). This was the first large photographic mosaic, using photographs of 10,062 people from 110 countries to make the ''
Mona Lisa The ''Mona Lisa'' is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. Considered an archetypal masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance, it has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, ...
''. * 1995 Adam Finkelstein (published mosaic in Mossy Bits) creates a mosaic of the 1930 oil painting by
Grant Wood Grant DeVolson Wood (February 13, 1891February 12, 1942) was an American artist and representative of Regionalism (art), Regionalism, best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest. He is particularly well known for ''America ...
, ''
American Gothic ''American Gothic'' is a 1930 oil on beaverwood painting by the American Regionalist artist Grant Wood. Depicting a Midwestern farmer and his wife or daughter standing in front of their Carpenter Gothic style home, ''American Gothic'' is one ...
'', from images collected from the Web in early 1995. * 1995 Robert Silvers creates an algorithm for generating Photomosaics programmatically and goes on to trademark the term Photomosaic and patent his process for creation of Photomosaics in 1997. The name ''Photomosaic'' and an implementation concept were trademarked by Robert Silvers' Runaway Technology, Inc. * 2000 Andrej Olejnik creates the first ''pattern-based photographic mosaics'' rendered wit
''Mosaic Creator software''


Artistic aspects

There is debate over whether Photomosaics are an art or mere technique. The making of a photomosaic is sometimes parallelled and compared to forms of artistic appropriation, like literary assemblage.Menke (2008) p.232 quote: n Rudyard Kipling's 1902 science-fiction short story "Wireless"we recognize that the tale's marshalling of realistic particulars has also been a systematic importation of details from Keats's poetry and life history ..The tale's elaborate descriptions were really Keats's pre-scriptions all along. As in a photomosaic image, the elements of the story that make it seem recognizable and real turn out to be chosen from an artificially constrained palette of appropriations; examined closely, each realistic detail reveals itself as a micro-quotation from that collection. Artists such as
David Hockney David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English Painting, painter, Drawing, draughtsman, Printmaking, printmaker, Scenic design, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considere ...
, Christopher Kates and Pep Ventosa have pioneered their own photographic mosaic techniques where multiple photographs are taken of a scene and then pieced together again to create a cohesive image.


Trademark and intellectual property of the concept

Robert Silvers, a Master's student at
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
, filed for a
trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...
on the term ''Photomosaic'' on September 3, 1996. This trademark was registered on August 12, 2003. Silvers also applied for a U.S.
patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...
on the production of Photomosaics on January 2, 1997, which was granted as in October 2000 and has been assigned to Runaway Technology, Inc. Patent applications in other countries were also filed, and patents granted include , , , and . He is quoted as saying: "By being granted this patent in the United States and other countries, we can protect our proprietary innovations and continue to make unique artwork." In September 2008, the Public Patent Foundation filed a formal request with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to review certain claims in the on photomosaics. The request was granted and a reexamination proceeding ensued. On August 31, 2010, the USPTO issued a Reexamination Certificate confirming the patentability of all claims in the patent which were amended to refer to shape matching (a feature that contributes to the high resolution of photomosaics). There are a number of other commercial companies that create mosaics with photos. Since there has been no litigation of these patents, these companies must therefore either use processes that do not infringe on the particular claimed process, have licenses under the patents, or are infringing those patents but Runaway Technology has chosen not to bring infringement proceedings. Silvers' patent may be regarded as a
software patent A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, library, user interface, or algorithm. The validity of these patents can be difficult to evaluate, as software is often at once a product of engineering, something ...
, a subject over which there is a great deal of
debate Debate is a process that involves formal discourse, discussion, and oral addresses on a particular topic or collection of topics, often with a moderator and an audience. In a debate, arguments are put forward for opposing viewpoints. Historica ...
. For example, states that "programs for computers as such" are not regarded as patentable inventions. Nevertheless, current practice relating to computer-implemented inventions under the EPC means that a process that provides a technical effect may be patented even if it is implemented by a computer. The UK patent deriving from became the subject of revocation proceedings in July 2006.Using th
UK Patents Status Enquiry
for EP0852363 provides full details on the current status of the patent.
In September 2009, the
UK Intellectual Property Office The Intellectual Property Office of the United Kingdom (often referred to as the UK IPO) is, since 2 April 2007, the operating name of The Patent Office. It is the official government body responsible for intellectual property rights in the UK ...
(UK-IPO) decided that the patent should not be revoked and terminated the proceeding. The European patents expired on 31 December 2017.


Video mosaic

Photographic mosaics are typically formed from a collection of still images. A more recent phenomenon, however, has been video mosaics which assemble video clips rather than still images to create a larger image. The closing credits of the 2005
PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October, in Europe on 24 Novembe ...
game ''
God of War A war god in mythology associated with war, combat, or bloodshed. They occur commonly in polytheism, polytheistic religions. Unlike most gods and goddesses in polytheistic religions, monotheistic deities have traditionally been portrayed in their ...
'', for example, incorporates a still image of the main character, Kratos, formed from a number of in-game videos. The term "video mosaic" also describes a large still image made from adjacent frames of video, such as those from video shots of geographic features like roads or cities. A mosaic of the video's relevant frames replaces the full video, saving time and bandwidth, since the stills are much smaller.


See also

*
ASCII art ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) character (computing), characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCI ...
* Impressionist mosaics *
Micrography Micrography (from Greek language, Greek, literally small-writing – "Μικρογραφία"), also called microcalligraphy, is a Jewish form of calligrams developed in the 9th century, with parallels in Christianity and Islam,Substitution tiling In geometry, a tile substitution is a method for constructing highly ordered Tessellation, tilings. Most importantly, some tile substitutions generate aperiodic tilings, which are tilings whose prototiles do not admit any tiling with translational ...
* Wikimedia logo mosaic


Notes


References

* Cartwright, Angela (2007
''Mixed Emulsions: Altered Art Techniques for Photographic Imagery''
* Francis, Joseph
History of Photo Mosaics
' * Menke, Richard (2008
''Telegraphic realism: Victorian fiction and other information systems''
* Silvers, Robert (2000
''Photomosaic portraits''


includes a sample of Dave McKean's 1994 DC Comics photographic mosaic.


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Photographic Mosaic Computer art Digital art Mosaic