Tiler: A Python Tool for Creating Pixel‑Art Mosaics from Small Tiles

The project tiler (GitHub: github.com/nuno-faria/tiler ) lets you compose a large image from many tiny tiles—LEGO pieces, symbols, emojis, or custom icons—much like a pixel‑art version of Minecraft.

Available tile sets include basic shapes (plus, circle, @, heart, multiplication sign, wave, bars), Minecraft blocks, and themed collections such as Halloween icons. Each tile’s size, color, and rotation can be adjusted, and you can control the overall mosaic resolution by setting the number of colors and tile size.

Examples shown include three versions of Van Gogh’s Starry Night rendered with circular tiles at 10×10, 25×25, and 50×50 resolutions, as well as LEGO‑brick mosaics and cross‑stitch‑style patterns.

Running the tool

Requirements: Python 3, pip, OpenCV, numpy, and tqdm. After installing dependencies, the tool is operated via the command line.

Key parameters to edit:

DEPTH : number of divisions per colour channel (e.g., DEPTH = 4 yields 64 colours).

ROTATIONS : list of rotation angles in degrees applied to the source image (e.g., [0, 90] ).

COLOR_DEPTH : same concept as DEPTH for the tiler module.

RESIZING_SCALES : scaling factors for each tile (e.g., [1, 0.75, 0.5, 0.25] ).

PIXEL_SHIFT : pixel offset for creating each tile (e.g., (5, 5) ).

OVERLAP_TILES , RENDER , POOL_SIZE , IMAGE_TO_TILE , TILES_FOLDER , OUT : additional options controlling overlap, rendering, multiprocessing pool size, input/output paths, etc.

The author, nuno‑faria , also maintains other open‑source projects such as a Java Sokoban game, a pixel‑style desktop football simulation, and various Tetris‑ and pinball‑style demos.

For more details and to download the source, visit the GitHub repository linked above.