Implementing Photomosaics

Last Updated : 27 Dec, 2021

Introduction

A photomosaic is an image split into a grid of rectangles, with each replaced by another image that matches the target (the image you ultimately want to appear in the photomosaic). In other words, if you look at a photomosaic from a distance, you see the target image; but if you come closer, you will see that the image actually consists of many smaller images. This works because of how the human eye works.

There are two kinds of mosaic, depending on how the matching is done. In simpler kind, each part of the target image is averaged down to a single color. Each of the library images is also reduced to a single color. Each part of the target image is then replaced with one from the library where these colors are as similar as possible. In effect, the target image is reduced in resolution (by downsampling), and then each of the resulting pixels is replaced with an image whose average color matches that pixel.

In the more advanced kind of photographic mosaic, the target image is not downsampled, and the matching is done by comparing each pixel in the rectangle to the corresponding pixel from each library image. The rectangle in the target is then replaced with the library image that minimizes the total difference. This requires much more computation than the simple kind, but the results can be much better since the pixel-by-pixel matching can preserve the resolution of the target image.

How to create Photomosaics?

Read the tile images, which will replace the tiles in the original image.
Read the target image and split it into an M×N grid of tiles.
For each tile, find the best match from the input images.
Create the final mosaic by arranging the selected input images in an M×N grid.

Splitting the images into tiles

Now let’s look at how to calculate the coordinates for a single tile from this grid. The tile with index (i, j) has a top-left corner coordinate of (i*w, i*j) and a bottom-right corner coordinate of ((i+1)*w, (j+1)*h), where w and h stand for the width and height of a tile, respectively. These can be used with the PIL to crop and create a tile from this image.
Averaging Color Values
Every pixel in an image has a color that can be represented by its red, green, and blue values. In this case, you are using 8-bit images, so each of these components has an 8-bit value in the range [0, 255]. Given an image with a total of N pixels, the average RGB is calculated as follows:
$\left ( r,g,b \right )_{avg}=\left ( \frac{\left ( r_{1} + r_{2} +....+ r_{N} \right )}{N}, \frac{\left ( g_{1} + g_{2} +....+ g_{N} \right )}{N}, \frac{\left ( b_{1} + b_{2} +....+ b_{N} \right )}{N} \right )$
Matching Images
For each tile in the target image, you need to find a matching image from the images in the input folder specified by the user. To determine whether two images match, use the average RGB values. The closest match is the image with the closest average RGB value.
The simplest way to do this is to calculate the distance between the RGB values in a pixel to find the best match among the input images. You can use the following distance calculation for 3D points from geometry:
$D_{1, 2}=\sqrt{\left ( r_{1} - r_{2} \right )^{2} + \left ( g_{1} - g_{2} \right )^{2} + \left ( b_{1} - b_{2} \right )^{2}}$
Now lets try to code this out

Python3

#Importing the required libraries
import os, random, argparse
from PIL import Image
import imghdr
import numpy as np
 
def getAverageRGBOld(image):
  """
  Given PIL Image, return average value of color as (r, g, b)
  """
  # no. of pixels in image
  npixels = image.size[0]*image.size[1]
  # get colors as [(cnt1, (r1, g1, b1)), ...]
  cols = image.getcolors(npixels)
  # get [(c1*r1, c1*g1, c1*g2),...]
  sumRGB = [(x[0]*x[1][0], x[0]*x[1][1], x[0]*x[1][2]) for x in cols] 
  # calculate (sum(ci*ri)/np, sum(ci*gi)/np, sum(ci*bi)/np)
  # the zip gives us [(c1*r1, c2*r2, ..), (c1*g1, c1*g2,...)...]
  avg = tuple([int(sum(x)/npixels) for x in zip(*sumRGB)])
  return avg
 
def getAverageRGB(image):
  """
  Given PIL Image, return average value of color as (r, g, b)
  """
  # get image as numpy array
  im = np.array(image)
  # get shape
  w,h,d = im.shape
  # get average
  return tuple(np.average(im.reshape(w*h, d), axis=0))
 
def splitImage(image, size):
  """
  Given Image and dims (rows, cols) returns an m*n list of Images 
  """
  W, H = image.size[0], image.size[1]
  m, n = size
  w, h = int(W/n), int(H/m)
  # image list
  imgs = []
  # generate list of dimensions
  for j in range(m):
    for i in range(n):
      # append cropped image
      imgs.append(image.crop((i*w, j*h, (i+1)*w, (j+1)*h)))
  return imgs
 
def getImages(imageDir):
  """
  given a directory of images, return a list of Images
  """
  files = os.listdir(imageDir)
  images = []
  for file in files:
    filePath = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(imageDir, file))
    try:
      # explicit load so we don't run into resource crunch
      fp = open(filePath, "rb")
      im = Image.open(fp)
      images.append(im)
      # force loading image data from file
      im.load() 
      # close the file
      fp.close() 
    except:
      # skip
      print("Invalid image: %s" % (filePath,))
  return images
 
def getImageFilenames(imageDir):
  """
  given a directory of images, return a list of Image file names
  """
  files = os.listdir(imageDir)
  filenames = []
  for file in files:
    filePath = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(imageDir, file))
    try:
      imgType = imghdr.what(filePath) 
      if imgType:
        filenames.append(filePath)
    except:
      # skip
      print("Invalid image: %s" % (filePath,))
  return filenames
 
def getBestMatchIndex(input_avg, avgs):
  """
  return index of best Image match based on RGB value distance
  """
 
  # input image average
  avg = input_avg
   
  # get the closest RGB value to input, based on x/y/z distance
  index = 0
  min_index = 0
  min_dist = float("inf")
  for val in avgs:
    dist = ((val[0] - avg[0])*(val[0] - avg[0]) +
            (val[1] - avg[1])*(val[1] - avg[1]) +
            (val[2] - avg[2])*(val[2] - avg[2]))
    if dist < min_dist:
      min_dist = dist
      min_index = index
    index += 1
 
  return min_index
 
 
def createImageGrid(images, dims):
  """
  Given a list of images and a grid size (m, n), create 
  a grid of images. 
  """
  m, n = dims
 
  # sanity check
  assert m*n == len(images)
 
  # get max height and width of images
  # ie, not assuming they are all equal
  width = max([img.size[0] for img in images])
  height = max([img.size[1] for img in images])
 
  # create output image
  grid_img = Image.new('RGB', (n*width, m*height))
   
  # paste images
  for index in range(len(images)):
    row = int(index/n)
    col = index - n*row
    grid_img.paste(images[index], (col*width, row*height))
     
  return grid_img
 
 
def createPhotomosaic(target_image, input_images, grid_size,
                      reuse_images=True):
  """
  Creates photomosaic given target and input images.
  """
 
  print('splitting input image...')
  # split target image 
  target_images = splitImage(target_image, grid_size)
 
  print('finding image matches...')
  # for each target image, pick one from input
  output_images = []
  # for user feedback
  count = 0
  batch_size = int(len(target_images)/10)
 
  # calculate input image averages
  avgs = []
  for img in input_images:
    avgs.append(getAverageRGB(img))
 
  for img in target_images:
    # target sub-image average
    avg = getAverageRGB(img)
    # find match index
    match_index = getBestMatchIndex(avg, avgs)
    output_images.append(input_images[match_index])
    # user feedback
    if count > 0 and batch_size > 10 and count % batch_size is 0:
      print('processed %d of %d...' %(count, len(target_images)))
    count += 1
    # remove selected image from input if flag set
    if not reuse_images:
      input_images.remove(match)
 
  print('creating mosaic...')
  # draw mosaic to image
  mosaic_image = createImageGrid(output_images, grid_size)
 
  # return mosaic
  return mosaic_image
 
# Gather our code in a main() function
def main():
  # Command line args are in sys.argv[1], sys.argv[2] ..
  # sys.argv[0] is the script name itself and can be ignored
 
  # parse arguments
  parser = argparse.ArgumentParser
    (description='Creates a photomosaic from input images')
  # add arguments
  parser.add_argument('--target-image', dest='target_image', required=True)
  parser.add_argument('--input-folder', dest='input_folder', required=True)
  parser.add_argument('--grid-size', nargs=2, dest='grid_size', required=True)
  parser.add_argument('--output-file', dest='outfile', required=False)
 
  args = parser.parse_args()
 
  ###### INPUTS ######
 
  # target image
  target_image = Image.open(args.target_image)
 
  # input images
  print('reading input folder...')
  input_images = getImages(args.input_folder)
 
  # check if any valid input images found  
  if input_images == []:
      print('No input images found in %s. Exiting.' % (args.input_folder, ))
      exit()
 
  # shuffle list - to get a more varied output?
  random.shuffle(input_images)
 
  # size of grid
  grid_size = (int(args.grid_size[0]), int(args.grid_size[1]))
 
  # output
  output_filename = 'mosaic.png'
  if args.outfile:
    output_filename = args.outfile
   
  # re-use any image in input
  reuse_images = True
 
  # resize the input to fit original image size?
  resize_input = True
 
  ##### END INPUTS #####
 
  print('starting photomosaic creation...')
   
  # if images can't be reused, ensure m*n <= num_of_images 
  if not reuse_images:
    if grid_size[0]*grid_size[1] > len(input_images):
      print('grid size less than number of images')
      exit()
   
  # resizing input
  if resize_input:
    print('resizing images...')
    # for given grid size, compute max dims w,h of tiles
    dims = (int(target_image.size[0]/grid_size[1]), 
            int(target_image.size[1]/grid_size[0])) 
    print("max tile dims: %s" % (dims,))
    # resize
    for img in input_images:
      img.thumbnail(dims)
 
  # create photomosaic
  mosaic_image = createPhotomosaic(target_image, input_images, grid_size,
                                   reuse_images)
 
  # write out mosaic
  mosaic_image.save(output_filename, 'PNG')
 
  print("saved output to %s" % (output_filename,))
  print('done.')
 
# Standard boilerplate to call the main() function to begin
# the program.
if __name__ == '__main__':
  main()

python test.py --target-image test-data/a.jpg --input-folder test-data/set1/ --grid-size 128 128

Output:

Reference Links:
1) Python Playground by Mahesh Venkitachalam.
2) PILLOW docs
3) Wikipedia – Photomosaics

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