How To Create The Mosaic Effect

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How to Create the Mosaic Effect Using Photoshop
by Strawberrie[/center]

This is one of my favorite image effects of all time. It works beautifully for banners and layouts.

1. Open up the image you want to modify in Photoshop. Duplicate the image layer (Layer > Duplicate Layer). Make sure the duplicate layer is selected.



2. Go to Filter > Pixelate > Mosaic. Set the cell size to 13 squares. You can adjust the cell size depending on your preferences and your image size.



You should get something like this:


3. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Sharpen. Repeat it once more.

You should get something like this:


4. Now comes the fun part. Play around with the blending mode and opacity of the duplicate layer. Some of my favorite blending modes are Multiply, Screen, Overlay, and Soft Light.



5. Here are some examples of possible results.

Blending mode: Multiply, Opacity: 50%


Blending mode: Screen, Opacity: 75%


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And if you want to take this one step further. Try selecting a specific area in your image to apply the mosaic effect to.

1. Open up your image in Photoshop again. There's no need to duplicate the layer this time.

2. Select the lasso tool and set the feathering to 2 px. Select the area you want to mosaic-fy. Don't worry about making the selection perfect. A loose and sketchy selection actual works better.

If you're just applying the effect to the background of your image (in this case, the sky), I recommend selecting the focused objects (in this case, the sunflowers) first and then inversing the selection. (right click > Select Inverse).



3. Copy & paste the selection onto a new layer. Make sure the new layer is selected.



4. Now go ahead and apply the mosaic effect (steps 2-4).

5. You can play around with some other Photoshop features to enhance your image. Here's a funky example of what colorizing your image can produce.



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The original image used in this tutorial was from stock.xchng.

Oooh! Nice! I think I'm gonna try to incorporate it into my future sigs.

ive been looking for this tuts for a long time.. thx

not bad hey strawberrie im surpised that you don't a doa few sigs, with what you can do, i wouldn't be suprised if you better then some of us.

but thats a good tutorial, you have a about 50-60 more filters to go through.

Hey that's a really nice tutorial...as snildude said that he will be using it in his future sigs....same here.....but my pc is broken