Ceramic tiles from pixelated bitmap

Jay Kickliter

I figured someone would have thought of this, or maybe they have and I'm not asking Google the right question.

I'm welding a coffee table from scrap steel. I want to finish the top with small ceramic tiles, all the colors corresponding to a single pixel. I know you can get images printed onto tiles, but I want each tile to be a solid color. All combined it will make a very pixelated photo.

Has anyone seen anything like this?

John R.

Yes, but no help on how to get it done.

In terms of finding software to lay this out, try searching for mosaic and also look for needle point and/or counted cross stich pattern makers.

The other way to start to work on this would be to get the picture you have in mind, and then define a custom color pallete in something like photoshop that matches up with your color choices. Then resample at the appropriate resolution.

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John R.
Click here to see my Nomad Build Log

Jay Kickliter

I guess that's the only way to do it. I was hoping there was a more automated way to do, like upload file, and get a box of tiles grouped by color. You're right, I'll need to limit the palette severely. A 48x48 pixel image is going to be 2300 tiles, that's a lot of time laying tiles, the fewer colors the better. I could just just print out a coded map and lay them. I'm thinking a sunflower against a solid background, so it will mostly be white, a few shades of yellow, and a little green. Figuring out how many of each to order might take a little work, I need to figure out how to analyze how many pixels of each color an image contains. I'm sure it's a simple problem, I just don't mess with images that often.

Unknown

There were programs back in the 80's that converted pictures to ASCII.· I think you might want to revise your search.· I think if you compressed the photo, you would get a pixel for light or a·pixel to represent·darkness but this is something I haven't attempted.

You might also want to search Sourceforge dot net.

John Abshier

Ah, it cannot be that hard.· Look at what the Romans did 2000+ years ago.

John Abshier

zoopydogsit

Hi Jay,

I saw that in Sydney they recently did some coffee art of Moana Lisa - pretty cool! Considering each pixel is a cup of coffee with different amounts of cream.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4EQHb61ioM

For what you want to do, you'd likely want to display a picture in low resolution RGB color, get the RGB value for each pixel. Then to make it a bit easier/fun you could use the Parallax Colorpal to give you the RGB value of the tiles you find (maybe build a hand held device that displays to an LCD, you could probably mock something up over a weekend with a BS2)·to grade them and see if they are sufficiently close to the RGB value of the pixel locations. Now if you have the time (and money), you could probably build a machine to take a low res image, map it to an array, then use a machine to pick the tiles from a series of hoppers and place them. Technically, if you could get sufficient tiles with sufficient color variations, you could then have them feed and gate to an assembly area, building up the pattern row by row. Easier said than done. But I sure can imagine how it would work.

Even more fun if you had access to ceramic tints and a kiln!

If I was doing it, I'd consider using something like the Colorpal to do the color grading of the tiles. Buidling a hand-held device could be fun and potentially a worthy kit for Parallax to sell

For a prototype of the project, maybe use the candy colored dots (called hundreds&thousands?) used on fairy bread, could be a neat thing to build up a pattern very quickly at relatively low cost for a prototype of the idea. Could be a really neat Propeller contest idea. (Hey Parallax, how about a ColorPal competition to see who can use it in the most industrious way I can imagine a lot of uses for them!).

What you are doing certainly sounds like fun, and may have commercial potential (one off ceramic tile mosaic coffee tables)

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

Jay,

A 48x48 coffee table is a very reasonable project to tackle for a tile project. I once thought I'd do my shower in one-inch tiles and even wrote a Perl program to do the layout. In the end, sanity prevailed, and I used 6" floor tiles instead.

Anyway, Corel PhotoPaint can do what you want. These are the steps:

1. Load the original photo.

2. Crop it so it's square.

3. Resample it to 48x48 pixels.

4. Resample it again to, say, eight times that size, but make sure anti-aliasing is not selected.

5. Palettize it to however many colors you want to use. You can either have PhotoPaint pick an optimum set of colors for you, in which case you'll have to find tiles to match; or you can acquire the tiles first, get their RGB values using one of Parallax's color sensors, and edit the palette with those colors. PhotoPaint will then place them optimally during the palettizing operation.

Here are a couple renditions of your avatar done by PhotoPaint using optimized 50- and 256-color tile selections:

····

A sunflower should be much easier, since it will require a much more limited palette of useful colors.

If you want a real challenge, design a pick-and-place robot that places the tiles upside down in an 8x8 grid fixture, so you can glue a mesh on the back. 64 tiles will be easier to install on the table all at once than one at a time. But, for that matter, even hand-placing the tiles in such a grid and gluing the mesh on will save you some hassle in the end.

-Phil

John R.

Taking Phil's mesh idea one step further, you could lay the tiles out face up (so you can get a preview), then use masking tape to cover portions or the entire mosaic for transfer (or inversion to do the mesh).

In terms of finding tiles with the colors you need, you may need to find some "craft shops" or look up "mosaics". I've never done a mosaic, but had to do some "odd" color matching, and have had mixed results with local tile shops. Some were great in terms of trying to help and find a source for stuff, others took the "if you don't see it, don't ask" approach. Depends on where you live. It can also help to take a trip to the "arty" part of town.

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John R.
Click here to see my Nomad Build Log

Jay Kickliter

Thanks for the advice. I don't want to get carried away building a machine to do this. I just don't know where to get started. I definitely don't want to do a classic mosaic, with odd shaped pieces. I'd like to stick to a grid, since it'll be easier and it doesn't seem to be too common. I live in NYC, so hopefully I can find a place with a large stock of small tiles.

Attached is an image I found on google that might work. Maybe a different background color would be better. "What do I know, I'm just a caveman."

mctrivia

here is a 9 color and 26 color layout. to make easy draw black lines every 8 pixels in paint. started to do on 9 color but don't have time to finish.

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Lots of propeller based products in stock at affordable prices.

propmodule.com will be closed May 1-10th. Orders made in that time will be shipped on the 11th.

kwinn

Jay, there are 1 inch tiles available that are mounted on a plastic mesh to make 12" x 12" (approximately) tiles. Using these (in a few colors) would greatly simplify your project. Check out ceramic tile suppliers or home decor stores.

zoopydogsit

Hi Jay,

For the color matching of the tiles using the Parallax ColorPal, the following is a thread in the Propeller forum that provides a good example to leverage. If you either have a Parallax serial LCD or a Rayman 4.3" VGA LCD then integration for a hand held device would be relatively trivial.

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=865569