Image Selection

Different light sources can shift a photo’s colors. For example, blue light from a computer screen can give skin a bluish cast. To keep colors accurate, shoot in natural or neutral, daylight-balanced light. Well-lit images with clear contrast deliver the best results!

Our palette includes 34 shades — a wide range, but still limited compared to the millions of colors in digital photography. When the subject and background share similar tones, they can visually “blend” together. For example, brown hair against a brown background may lose definition. Choosing a photo with strong contrast helps your mosaic look clear and striking.

Shadows on faces (for example, from hats) are not well rendered in pixelated images. Whenever possible, choose well-lit photos without facial shadows.

A high level of detail in an image requires more pixels. The size of your mosaic determines its resolution — more panels mean more pixels. If you try to fit a very detailed image (such as a group of people) into a small format, the result may look pixelated or blurry. To achieve clarity, either choose a larger set or select an image with fewer details.

When an image is pixelated, some detail is lost, which can make it harder to recognize. Human faces are especially interesting in this regard, because our brains are remarkably good at identifying them even at low resolution. You’ll also get good results with images that have clear, recognizable contours — for example, a house on a hill or a palm tree on the beach.

For photos with multiple subjects, it’s best if their faces are close together. To improve the clarity of a pixelated image, zoom in as much as possible on the subjects. Choose images where all faces appear close to one another — this way, each person will have a clearer outline and the overall result will look sharper and higher in quality.

Pets are an obvious choice for our mosaic kit. If you have a pet, your photo gallery is probably full of pictures in every pose and angle. To get the best result, choose a photo that remains recognizable even when pixelated. While a dog rolling in the grass with one ear flattened may be adorable, a clear, frontal shot works much better. Open-mouth smiles with the tongue out also translate beautifully and look irresistibly cute!