Is there an automated tool for making photo-mosaics (using images as pixels)?

Question

I occasionally see portraits and other images which have been redrawn into an abstract form, where each pixel in the redrawn image is actually another, much smaller picture.

I am looking for a tool (or library) which can perform this type of transformation automatically. Does something like that exist?

Answer 1

I don't know about any existing tool; but the general algorithm would be to look at each pixel in the source image, and from a pool of pictures select one to represent the picture. You would probably want select the image that has the most content of the pixel color. (So when you encounter a blue pixel, you select an image to represent it, that is mostly blue, and so on).

Answer 2

You are thinking of a Photomosaic. You can use AndreaMosaic. There is a HowTo here.

Answer 3

Maybe this can help. Its php,gd and mysql based. Good luck.