# How do you make a big picture out of a bunch of little ones?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-make-a-big-picture-out-of-a-bunch-of-little-ones/395983>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [March 15, 2007, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-make-a-big-picture-out-of-a-bunch-of-little-ones/395983 "2007-03-15T01:53:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![boytyperanma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4491bb/32.png) [@boytyperanma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/boytyperanma)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-make-a-big-picture-out-of-a-bunch-of-little-ones/395983/1 "2007-03-15T01:53:03Z")

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A friend of mine wants to make a wall mural out of Magic the Gathering cards. How is this process generally done? Is there a computer program to map things out.

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**Author:** ![Danalan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@Danalan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danalan)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-make-a-big-picture-out-of-a-bunch-of-little-ones/395983/2 "2007-03-15T01:59:13Z")

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First, get some tape…

Sorry, couldn’t resist. There will be copyright issues anytime you take someone else’s work and reproduce it, particularly in digital form.

Are you looking to have a large-size physical print, like a poster, or are you looking to have a digital image of lots of cards?

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**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-make-a-big-picture-out-of-a-bunch-of-little-ones/395983/3 "2007-03-15T02:04:57Z")

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In general, you start by pixelizing or screening your large photo so it’s divided into subregions at whatever resolution you want to go to the trouble of. You map the brightness and hue of each region, then you find a smaller picture that overall has the same average brightness and hue as that region of the large picture. Repeat until you have enough small pictures to make into a mosiac that resembles the large picture. This used to be a real project pre-computer.

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-make-a-big-picture-out-of-a-bunch-of-little-ones/395983/4 "2007-03-15T02:06:58Z")

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Or, if you have a Mac, download freeware [MacOSaiX](http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/9219) and go to town with it. It’s effortlessly easy.

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**Author:** ![Lionne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Lionne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lionne)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-make-a-big-picture-out-of-a-bunch-of-little-ones/395983/5 "2007-03-15T03:04:10Z")

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If you don’t have a Mac, are there any programs recommended for Windows?

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**Author:** ![cckerberos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@cckerberos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cckerberos)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2007, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-you-make-a-big-picture-out-of-a-bunch-of-little-ones/395983/6 "2007-03-15T03:08:43Z")

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[QUOTE=LunaV]  
If you don’t have a Mac, are there any programs recommended for Windows?  
[/QUOTE]

There’s a list of software links at the bottom of [this Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photographic_mosaic).