Speed up rendering photo mosaics in Mosaic Creator

There are tips for speed up rendering mosaics.

Mosaic is rendering in 3 parts:

 1. Preparing cell images
 2. Calculating
 3. Rendering mosaic image

1. Preparing cell images

Mosaic Creator doesn’t use image library (database) as other mosaic software. Image library is prepared image set with pre-calculated values. Images in library are small and result mosaic quality is limited with images stored in library. Mosaic Creator is not limited with image library. It can render mosaics with large cell (300×300 pixels or more).

For each rendering are prepared values for all defined cell images. This process is slower if images are to large (800 pixels or more). To speed up preparing cell images, reduce size of cell images. Use some graphics tool (Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo,  Paint.NET, …) with batch conversion option. Preserve aspect ratio of cell images. Destination size of images may be near to maximal used cell size. If you want render mosaics with cells 200×200 pixels, resize cell images to this size.

2. Calculating

For each cell in mosaic is selected one cell image. Speed of calculation depends on number of mosaic cells. Use high number of cells only in final mosaic rendering. Good starting value for photo mosaics is 1000 cells (raster 32×32 cells).

3. Rendering mosaic image

Mosaic is generated from cell images line by line. Cell images are resized to destination size. After resize are applied enhancements as colorization or added borders. If cell images are to large, rendering is slow. See Preparing cell images for resizing cell images (step 1).

Mosaic creator renders mosaic in slices. This enables render large mosaics. For speed up rendering is used image cache. See program configuration and option Temporary memory cache. Image cache is used to store resized cell images. If you are use many cell images and repetition of each cell image is low, image cache can’t be used effectively. Time is consumed with resizing cell images.

 Additional options as Antialiasing and Stretching cell images can increase rendering time more than 2 times. Use Antialiasing and Stretch cell images only in final mosaic rendering.