Medley Animation

Here's another cool Medley effect I came across on Antonio's site. He used Cinema4D to create this short animation that illustrates how Medley images assemble.

The Droste Medley

Antonio has pushed the envelope some more, using Picture Medley and PhotoShop and Ultra Fractal to create Droste-inspired images like this one.

You can find more images like this one on his web site.

Very cool!

A Medley Banner

In a piece of email today, Erica asked whether it was possible to include words in a Medley, perhaps one for a web site banner.

Of course!

I started with Paint, and quickly laid out the text and logo. I saved the banner image, then started Picture Medley.

Checking the pixel dimensions of the Paint image (1025x296) I came up with an aspect ratio of 3.5 to 1. So I used the "Custom Print Size" option to choose a custom size of 5x18 for the overall medley. Looking at the grid overlay I could see the tiles weren't small enough, so I increased to 40 tiles on the longest side and generated a medley using my collection of flower photos. The result was difficult to see because my collection of flower photos is made up of fairly consistent exposures. By using the "Exposures" tweak I was able to increase the contrast of the resultin medley (the Exposures tweak increases the number of images to choose from for each tile by creating higher- and lower- contrast copies of the main tile images). The result is above.

Click on either image to see a higer-resolution version.

Medley Gallery: Varying Tile Sizes

PictureMedley doesn't currently support multiple tile sizes, but that hasn't stopped Ant over at Village9991! He accomplished this feat using PhotoShop.

• First he generated 3 medleys using the same target and tile images.
• For each medley he varied the setting for "Tiles on Longest Side", using values of 12, 24, and 48.
• He then brought all 3 images into PhotoShop, placing them on separate layers. The 48-tile medley went to the bottom, and the 12-tile medley to the top.
• By then selecting and subtracting tiles from the upper layers he was able to expose the smaller tiles underneath. He wisely chose to expose underlying tiles only where finer detail was required.

Very creative! (Click the picture to see some of his other similar work.)

Medley Gallery: Effect Samples

PictureMedley includes a number of effects. Some are useful to help the target image show through, others are purely for fun. Click each thumbnail to see a larger size. Each of these is built from the same set of flower photo tiles, using the application's icon as the target image. The "use target as tile" option was selected, and you should be able to find the icon in each of these medley images.

Click each sample image to see it in a higher resolution.

	None - This is the no frills basic medley.
	Float - Tiles are a little smaller and float in front of the target image. This allows the target image to show through between the tiles, helping the target image resolve itself more easily. Tiles are still 100% opaque, so the majority of the medley stands entirely on its own. If you don't have quite enough tiles or the ones you have don't match the color of the target image so well, and you're having a hard time getting the medley to look close to the target, the tiny bit of image in the gap between tiles provides a strong and subliminal hint about the target image.
	Frost - Imagine the tiles being slightly transparent. This effect combines the simplicity of "None" with the subliminal hint from Float to produce a subtle improvement to the quality of the resulting medley. This has the effect of tinting the tiles ever so slightly toward the target image. I think it's cheating but it's subtle and it can save the day if your tile images don't have just the right colors to match your target image.
	Raised - Tiles have a subtle highlight and shadow, providing an illusion that the tiles are three-dimensional.
	Glass - Tiles have a subtle glossy appearance, providing an illusion that the tiles are made of glass.
	Marbles - Tiles are rendered inside overlapping glass marbles. Be warned - this one takes a relatively long time to draw!
	Lenses - Tiles are overlaid with a magnifying glass. I discovered that if I drew the marble in front of each tile in the default effect (no effect) they looked like little magnifying lenses.
	Simple Overlap - Tiles will overlap each other. Using this option creates a more organic looking medley by allowing tiles the opportunity to align more closely with the target image.
	Circles with Shadow - Tiles overlap but are cropped to circles (or ellipses) with drop-shadows to create an interesting effect akin to printing the tile images on coins and tossing them in a pile.
	Blended Circles - Tiles overlap but are rendered with a feathered circular edge, creating an interesting effect akin to a watercolor painting. This is one of my favorites for medleys about vacations since the way the tile images blend into one another reminds me of the way my mental imagery from the vacation blend together in my mind.
	Puzzle - Tiles are cropped and laid out with a jigsaw puzzle outline, producing a fun effect.
	Custom - Splat (with shadow) - This is one of two user-specified effects. The user-specified mask is applied to each tile, and tiles are laid out overlapping 50% with a drop shadow. PictureMedley includes several pre-defined masks, and you can easily create your own using your favorite drawing software.
	Custom - Chalk Stroke (without shadow) - The other user-specified effect. A user-specified mask is applied to each tile, and tiles are laid out overlapping 50% with no drop shadow.

Medley Gallery: Village9991

Antonio has built a number of medleys, even some large print ones. He has been really creative with the tile images; using abstract shapes and manipulating the contrast and brightness to allow them to fade away into the background.

Here's one of Leonardo Davinci's Mona Lisa:


Here's one of Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus:


Lots more great examples on his site.

Medley Gallery: Video Edron

Gerardo built this a while ago using the PictureMedley software and Sony Vegas Video 5.0. He said the hardest part was lining up all of the "in" and "out" video frames.

Very cool!

Links:

• Veoh


• YouTube


• Stage6

PictureMedley

In musical terms, a medley combines a variety of melodies to form a new composition. When you listen to a musical medley, you hear and can recognize the individual melodies; and the overall composition has its own overall theme and presence.

In photographic terms, then, a medley combines a variety of photographs to form a new composite image. As with the musical medley, you can see and recognize the individual images within the Picture Medley, but the overall composite image captures a bigger concept than the individual images can capture on their own.

Medley images are also referred to as photographic mosaics, or photographic montages.

The software returns after a brief hiatus in which I've given it a facelift, a new name, fixed bugs, and added a couple of minor features. Here are a few highlights:

• New name and updated styling for the UI. Brought the help file up to date.


• Simplified including the Target image as a tile (new checkbox in step 2).


• HTML output now uses ImageMap.


• New option in the Customize menu to disable the "use tiles only once" feature.


• New "Frost" visual effect: the overall medley is tinted slightly with the colors of the target image, which helps to make the target image more visible especially when you don't have enough of the right colors in the image tiles.


• Fixed a few bugs, reduced memory footprint, improved performance.