| A digital image is comprised of pixels of specific colors that are situated at specific positions to create a recognizable image to the viewer. To decompose an image is to create disjoint outlined visible groups of adjacent similarly colored pixels. Each group is known as a tile, has a specific color and shape, and is placed at an appropriate position to preserve the recognizability and content of the image. Doing so produces the artistic effect of a mosaic or stained glass. Most of the existing applications that can render this effect, do so by first partitioning the image into a uniform grid of tiles without taking into consideration important features in the image such as color and edges. Various effects such as edge-outlining are later added to attempt to emphasize the image's prominent characteristics. This approach leaves much to be desired as the resultant image potentially lacks aesthetic appeal. This research decomposes the image by taking into consideration the main content of the image---the colors it contains, and in particular, the perceptual color of its pixels. Doing so preserves the recognizability of the image and produces an aesthetic mosaic effect. |
