Mosaizer Pro

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on July 18, 2012

Graphics tools that can create photo mosaics aren't scarce, even when filtered down to freeware. Mosaizer Pro by APP Helmond does that. But this free tool earns a spot even in the most well-stocked graphics toolkit by taking photo mosaics -- pictures created out of many smaller pictures -- to new levels. With it, you can "paint with pictures," creating artistic images out of your own pictures using Mosaizer's tools and vast library of free images, patterns, and textures. You can also add your own objects and save your settings as projects you can return to. Mosaizer's wizards and slider-based adjustments make the whole process easy enough for the rawest beginner, but it also offers plenty of flexibility for advanced users and pros.

Mosaizer Pro's user interface is free of the cluttered toolbars and sidebars typical of most top-level graphics apps these days. A wizard-based layout walked us through the steps of selecting an image, setting the pixel count and image number of the mosaic's tiles, and tuning in the colors. Our selected image appeared in the main window with tabs for Pre-Process, Mosaic Results, and Post-Process views. A small preview pane and a zoom slider made zooming in on our mosaic easy, which is a good thing because Mosaizer Pro can generate huge mosaics (it's "limited" to 51GB) yet with very fine detail.

When we were ready, we pressed Start. Mosaizer Pro processed our image and displayed a preview of the results, which we could save or keep working on. Mosaizer Pro has two startup options, Start Wizard and Start Normal; switching from the default Start Wizard mode to Start Normal let us access the various options on the Special Functions menu, such as "Super" controls, black-and-white analysis, and the ability to save stone and mosaic data. The Library menu gave us access to Mosaizer Pro's extensive object library as well as the Library Creation wizard.

Mosaizer Pro offers lots of help, documentation, and other resources, including online forums and assistance as well as galleries where users can post the images they've made with the program.

Publisher's Description

From APP Helmond:

Mosaizer Pro is a photo mosaic creator with an additional set of exclusive tools to create great photo-art painting effects. It works with a large number of bitmaps. It's literally a digital paintbrush to paint with pictures. You can create photo art. It also includes bitmap editing tools such as patterns, colored patches, masks and filters and it basically use a large number of pictures to work with.

Features create photo mosaics (current limit: 51 GB size), transparency and masks to create invisible boundaries between sub-pictures and allow for smooth picture overlaps, extensive pre- and post-processing with filters, masks, color corrections and design settings, 32-bit alpha-masks to combine overlay effects with transparency and to create 3D true effects, brush masks to create true painting effects on any source bitmap, patterns, such as circles, spirals, and hexagons to add that one and only special effect, and overlay textures to create a 3D surface effect, for example a burlap or canvas look.

What's new in this version: Version 9.2 build 147 added a wizard for a three-step photo mosaic creation, option to create super size Mosaics, and Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Polish languages.