Create a Personalized ‘I Love You’ Photo Mosaic with Python

When Valentine's Day or Qixi approaches, many struggle to find a unique surprise for their partner. This guide presents a creative method: generate a photo where the shape of the image is formed by repeatedly writing the phrase “I love you”.

Requirements

Python 3.7 (or later)

OpenCV (cv2) – for reading the source image

Pillow (PIL) – for creating and drawing on a new image

Core Idea

Read an original picture, extract its pixel colors, and then create a blank canvas of the same size. By iterating over the canvas with a fixed step, write characters from the target phrase onto the canvas, coloring each character with the corresponding pixel’s RGB value. The result is a new image that visually resembles the original but is composed of the repeated phrase.

Implementation Steps

Import the required libraries.

import cv2
from PIL import Image, ImageDraw, ImageFont

Define a function that takes the source image path and the text to draw. def draw(pic, draw_text): Read the image and create a white canvas of identical dimensions.

img = cv2.imread(pic)
blank = Image.new("RGB", [img.shape[1], img.shape[0]], "white")
drawObj = ImageDraw.Draw(blank)  # ready to draw text

Set drawing parameters (these values work well for most photos):

n = 10          # pixel sampling interval
m = 9           # font size
font_path = "<your_font_path>"
font = ImageFont.truetype(font_path, size=m)

Loop over the image pixels, placing characters and coloring them with the source pixel’s RGB values.

for i in range(0, img.shape[0], n):
    for j in range(0, img.shape[1], n):
        drawObj.text(
            [j, i],
            draw_text[int(j / n) % len(draw_text)],
            fill=(img[i][j][2], img[i][j][1], img[i][j][0]),
            font=font
        )

Save the generated image. blank.save('img_' + pic) Call the function with your photo and the desired phrase. draw('1.jpg', "我爱你") The final output is a unique, love‑themed picture that can be shared on social media or printed as a gift.