Making a Lego Mosaic from a Digital Photograph

A little-known sub-hobby for Lego fanatics is mosaic making. Lego mosaics are simple to make, if you have the right tools and the right resources. They can decorate a home or office wall, a child's bedroom, or a small Lego mosaic can be framed and placed on a desktop. Although Lego mosaics can be made of abstract images, I prefer to make Lego mosaics from actual photographs.

To make a Lego mosaic from a photograph, you first need some software to convert photographs into pixelated mosaics. I have found that the best program for converting photographs into Lego mosaics is called "Pic to Brick." Pic to Brick allows you to load a photograph, specify the colors and shapes of Lego bricks that you want to incorporate into your Lego mosaic, select the dithering method used to convert the photograph into a mosaic, see a preview of what the finished mosaic will look like, and print out a Lego parts list and assembly instructions to make your mosaic. Pic to Brick gives you the option of using 1 x 1 Lego tiles, or a combination of larger bricks. You can download Pic to Brick from this Web site: Pic to Brick

You can use both color and black & white photographs as the source images for Lego Mosaics in Pic to Brick, although you should make sure that you choose a photograph that has enough contrast and that has easily-discernible features. This is because the process of rendering a photograph into a mosaic tends to obscure many small details in favor of larger-grained features in the picture. In addition, you may need to experiment with the dithering and quantisization methods to see which method yields a Lego mosaic for a given image that appeals best to your own aesthetic sensibilities. If you would like the final Lego mosaic to show a great deal of detail, you should opt to make a larger mosaic. This is because a larger Lego mosaic can display more detail, just as HDTV can display more detail than regular TV. I find that a Lego mosaic having dimensions of approximately one meter by one meter is usually sufficient to show plenty of detail from the original source image.

I prefer to use 1 x 1 Lego tiles for Lego mosaics, mainly because they are the smallest Lego pieces and because they are available in the widest variety of colors. In addition, the 1 x 1 Lego tiles are lightweight, which is an important consideration if you plan to frame or mount your Lego mosaic when it is completed. Although you can purchase Lego bricks and tiles from the Lego online store, the most affordable place to buy Lego tiles for making a Lego mosaic is a website called BrickLink.com. From this website you can purchase supplies for making Lego mosaics in bulk at a substantially cheaper price than you can get from Lego directly.

Once you have your Lego pieces and your Lego mosaic directions from Pic to Brick, you can begin assembling your Lego mosaic. You should consider using lightweight Lego base plates as a backing for your Lego mosaic, since this will give you something to which you can attach individual Lego tiles. You should try to keep additional Lego parts to a minimum, though, since additional pieces means additional weight, which can make your Lego mosaic more difficult to mount when it is done.

If you are a Lego fan and have not yet tried making a Lego mosaic, download Pic to Brick from the preceding link, try rendering some photographs into Lego mosaics, order your Lego tiles from BrickLink.com, and you will be making fabulous-looking Lego mosaics in no time.