photomosaic

photomosaic is a free, open-source Python package for building a large image out of smaller images from a tile collection. Viewed from a distance, the assembled tiles form the target photograph. The package supports layouts with different tile sizes, including irregular placement and overlap. It can use smaller tiles in detailed regions, and a mask can guide the partition so it roughly follows an outline. For color matching, photomosaic can adjust the target palette to the colors present in the tile pool. It also uses colorspacious for perceptually accurate matching. The package can retrieve tile images from Flickr search results or albums through Flickr’s public API. Downloaded images come with JSON attribution information. Search queries can be filtered by license, while album downloads do not programmatically check licenses. The documentation suggests that a pool of about 300 images is typically the minimum for good results. Install it with pip; the installation page specifies Python 3.5 or later. An optional parallel extra provides experimental parallelism features. Users can also experiment with custom tile partitioning, color characterization, matching, and drawing strategies. The project supports custom tile libraries and tile reuse controls, and can output PNG or JPG files.