Patent ID: 8331727

Claim:
A method for making mosaics, wherein the image to be produced is digitally processed to produce an image according to the size of the tesserae to be used, which comprises the following operational steps: (a) Preparing the material wherefrom the tesserae that determine the mosaic are to be produced using any conventional cutting system, (b) Analysing the available material, by means of an optical capturing process, determining and recording the differentiating characteristics of each tessera, (c) Storing the analysed characteristics of each tessera in a database of available materials, and the exact storage place of each piece, (d) Analysing the characteristics of the image to be reproduced using tesserae, in digital format, said image being divided into fragments or pieces of photo according to the shapes of the available tesserae, and storing the data relating to each piece of photo in a database, (e) Comparing the data for each piece of photo whereinto the image is divided with the different tesserae available in the materials database, assigning to each piece of photo a tessera with values that coincide or acceptably coincide within a previously established tolerance range, (f) Generating a preliminary image of the final appearance of the mosaic with the tessera assigned, optionally manually modifying the design according to the tesserae available in the materials database, (g) Automatically assigning the position of each tessera on the working or configuration plane of the mosaic, in addition to previously assigning the place where said tessera is stored and updating the database with regard to the stocks of materials and completed pieces of photo, and (h) Gluing or fixing each of the tesserae that make up the mosaic, Wherein analysis steps b) and d) comprise the following operational steps in relation to the tesserae and the pieces of photo, respectively: (i) Dividing the captured image of each tessera and each piece of photo into sections, (ii) Assigning to each section of the tesserae and of the pieces of photo a color characteristic consisting of the mean of all the components of the color characteristic of the pixels that form it, (iii) Calculating the mean of the values of the color characteristic of all the sections and calculating the greatest and lowest values thereof, (iv) Determining the uniformity of the tesserae and of the pieces of photo, comprising determining that the values of the color characteristics of the sections are within the previously defined tolerance range, wherein case it is considered a uniform tessera or piece of photo, and otherwise it is considered a tessera or piece of photo with marks, and Wherein steps (d)-(g) are computer-implemented steps of a computer program encoded in a computer-readable medium storing non-transitory instructions.