Output mosaic setup screen

Layout - Here you may see a miniature preview of the finished mosaic, as it would be seen from a distance.

Units - You may choose Pixels, Inches or Centimeters as a mosaic size units.

Resolution - You need to set this value to allow the program to convert pixels units into inches or centimeters.

Mosaic Width, Mosaic Height - You have to set one of these values, the other will be calculated automatically.
Note:
These are sizes of the mosaic area of the output image only. I.e. if you'll set size of mosaic to 10 x 10 inches and later add 10-inch border for all sides, your full output would be 30 x 30 inches.

Grid - You may use these options to add grid lines on the output mosaic.
Draw grid - Check this check box to draw the grid lines.
Grid color - This will bring up the Color Dialogue box to select a color of the grid lines.
Line width - Input width of grid line in pixels here.

Borders - You may use these options to add borders to the output mosaic.
Add borders - Check this check box to add the borders.
Border color - This will bring up the Color Dialogue box to select a color For the borders.
Top border, Left border, Right border, Bottom border - Input the width of borders here. Width of the borders should be set in the current measurement units.

Image output info - You may see general information about the output image sizes here.
Single tile size - Size of a single tile in all measurement units.
Output size - Overall size of output image in all measurement units. Sizes of borders count towards the overall size here.

Additional saves options:

Color enhance - These options allow you to change the colors of your tiles to improve the final output. Sometimes this is the only way to get good looking mosaic, especially when mosaic was made using limited count of tiles in the library. You can use Color correction simultaneously with Blending to get excellent results. Try playing with different values.

Color correction % - The Color correction option "shifts" the colors in a tile to match the average colors of the same area in the original image. This is a similar procedure to correcting the "white balance" of an image that you may have seen in other graphics programs. For example, it may make the tile seem more blue, if the underlying area is quite blue. When a high percentage of correction is used, you may lose some details from the tile image (especially in very dark or very bright areas), but generally this method is very effective, and can be quite subtle, even for values of 50% and upwards.

Blend tile color % - The Blend tile color option blends the output mosaic with the sampled version of the original main theme image (this is a reduced resolution version of the original). At low values (between 0 and 25%), this can drastically improve the final output image without it being too obvious that you have cheated. Above 30% the detail in the tiles begins to be lost in favour of the original image. This option can work extremely well between 10% and 20% especially when combined with a Color correction of between 20% to 50%

Detailed blend - If Detailed blend is enabled, the blend option above is performed with the original image, instead of the sampled version. This is much less subtle. If the blend percent is high you will see every small details of your original image visible through the mosaic tiles. It will be quite obvious that you have used blending. There may be situations where you want this effect. Mostly though, you will probably want to disable "Detailed blend". In this case your mosaic will be blended with a reduced resolution version of the original, producing a much more subtle effect.

Advanced

Use stored thumbs - This option will create the mosaic from the small thumbnail images in the library instead of the original images. This will give you save the mosaic much faster, but because of small size of these thumbs it is recommended only for small mosaics or for quickly producing a draft.

Sharpen tiles - When enabled Mazaika will "Sharpen" the resampled tiles. It will give you much sharper mosaic tiles. Usually it is recommended to enable this option. Please note that if the images that you use as tiles are already very sharp it maybe good to disable this option to avoid "oversharp" images.

System

Write direct to disk - This options will allow you to save very large mosaics (15000x15000 pixels or more) without using too many computer resources (memory). It is always recommended to check this, especially if your computer does not have much memory.

Use fast jpeg open/resize - Use this option to speed up the final drawing process if you use large jpeg images as a tiles. Usually this option speeds up the process a few times, but as there are many variants of jpeg compression sometimes the speed increase maybe not be considerable. You are recommended to enable this option. There is no quality loss when it is enabled.

Save as - Press this button to start saving. It may take up to a few minutes to save large mosaics. Speed depends on file format, tile count, tile size and additional options you choose.

Stop - Press this button to stop the saving process at any time.
Note: When you save with the Write direct to disk option checked, the output file will be created on your hard drive at the very beginning of save process. This means that if you will stop the process in the middle you will get a half rendered file that you have to delete manually. When you save the file with Write direct to disk option not checked, the output file will be created on your hard drive at the very end of the save process, this means that if you will stop in the middle of the process, no file will have been created.

Close - Use this button to close the Output mosaic setup screen.