How to Make a Photo Mosaic With Paint
You don't have to purchase an expensive photo editing program to make a photo mosaic. You can make one using the program that likely was preinstalled on your computer---Microsoft Paint. Like everything in Paint, the process is amazingly simple. All you'll need are the photos you plan to use for your mosaic and you'll be ready to begin.
Instructions
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1
Open Paint by going to the "Start" menu and clicking on the "Accessories" option. Click on "Paint."
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2
Click on one of the white dots around the canvas and hold down the left mouse button. Drag your mouse. This will resize the canvas. You can make further adjustments in height or width by using the other two white dots to drag the canvas in other directions.
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3
Decide how large you want your photo mosaic to be. Look down at the bottom of your screen. You will see the length and width of the canvas in pixels. A good size for a mosaic that will be displayed on a blog, forum or social networking page is 450 pixels wide by 450 pixels long. If you plan to print the mosaic, Microsoft advises that you make your image at least 960 by 1280 to print a 4-by-5.3-inch image on a 240 ppi (pixels per inch) printer.
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Click on the "Paste" icon in the upper-left corner. Select "Paste From" from the menu. A window will come up that permits you to select a photo from your hard drive. Choose the first photo you want. Use your cursor to make the photo the size you want. Drag the photo to the upper-left part of the canvas.
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Repeat step four as many times as you'd like, each time resizing the photo with your cursor and then moving it into position.
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Get rid of any remaining white space by resizing your canvas so that it is flush with the photos you have overlaid on it.
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Go to the main menu and select "Save As." If you are planning to showcase your mosaic on the Internet, select ".GIF" or ".JPEG" from the drop-down menu. The experts at Easy Computer Tips advise that these files take up much less room. If you plan to print the mosaic, select ".BMP" because it is a standard file size that will not lose quality. Select a file location that you can easily find later, such as your desktop or Pictures folder.
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Tips & Warnings
To create a mosaic that becomes an entirely new image, select photos with the dominant colors you want to use. You will use each photo, sized very small, as a "dab" of paint on your mosaic. You will need hundreds of photos to accomplish a detailed mosaic of this sort.
You can use software online to make a complex mosaic rapidly. See the Resource section.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit mosaic image by david hughes from Fotolia.com
