OneTaskBy Tim King · Updated
Image to Mosaic
Brick, Tile or Square Mosaic From a Photo, With a Piece Count per Colour
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How the Image To Mosaic works
This image to mosaic tool rebuilds a picture from tiles. A mosaic rebuilds a picture from a grid of solid-coloured pieces, whether those are studded plastic bricks on a baseplate, glazed ceramic tiles in grout or plain squares. Drop in a photo, choose how many pieces wide it should be and this tool renders the mosaic, tallies how many pieces of each colour you need and lets you download both. Nothing leaves your browser.
Image to mosaic: how the mosaic is built
The photo is shrunk to the chosen number of pieces across, keeping its proportions, so every piece corresponds to one averaged block of the original. Each block is then matched to the closest colour in the palette for the chosen style and drawn as that piece: bricks get a stud with a shadow and highlight, tiles get a slightly uneven glaze inside a grout line, and flat squares are plain colour for a clean pixel look. The finished render is a PNG you can print as a build guide or share as art.
Choosing the width
Sixteen pieces across gives a chunky icon; 48 is a recognisable portrait; 96 to 128 reads almost like a photo from across a room. Because the grid follows the image's aspect ratio, a 48-wide portrait of a 3:4 photo is 48 by 64, or 3072 pieces. The Grid stat shows the exact count. Standard brick baseplates are 32 studs across, so 32, 64 and 96 map to one, two and three plates.
The palettes
Plastic bricks uses twenty colours that match the widely available 1×1 plate and tile colours, including the greys, tans and darker shades that carry a portrait. Ceramic tiles uses a set of sixteen glazed tones, from ivory and terracotta through teal and cobalt, with a warm grout between them. Flat squares uses the brick palette without the studs, which suits printing as a paint-by-number chart. No dithering is applied, because a physical mosaic is built one piece per cell and dithered noise would be hard to lay by hand.
The piece count
Switch Download to Piece count to get a text file listing every colour used and how many pieces of it appear, sorted from most to least. The Most used stat previews the top three. Buy a few extra of the small counts; being three pieces short of a colour is the usual reason a build stalls.
Getting a good result
Mosaics with limited palettes flatten subtle colour, so photos with clear areas of distinct colour and strong light-dark contrast work best. If a face loses definition, try a tighter crop so it fills more of the grid, or increase the pieces across. Bright backgrounds waste pieces; crop them out or accept a large count of white.
FAQ
Can I get a step-by-step build guide?
The PNG is the guide: print it at a size where each piece is legible and work row by row. For large mosaics, print it at a scale where one baseplate fits a page, and use the piece count to buy the parts before you start.
Why are the colours not exactly like my photo?
Each piece can only be one of the palette colours, chosen by nearest match. Skin tones become tan and flesh, sky becomes light blue, and subtle gradients become bands. That is the nature of a physical mosaic; the eye blends the pieces back together at viewing distance.
What size print does the PNG make?
Piece size sets the pixels per piece in the output. At 24 px a 48-wide mosaic is 1152 px across, enough for a sharp A4 print. Choose 32 for large posters or 12 to keep the file small for sharing.
See also: all Images tools, Audio, Video & Screen, PDF, SVG, Simulations & Screensavers, Generative Art, Chart Makers, 3D Model Viewers, Drawing Pads, Mockups & 3D Making, Diagram Makers, 3D Science, Tracker Music.
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