PhotoCollage Now in the Philippines
by Bayani S. San Diego Jr., The Philipine Star, April 28, 2000
With the new technology called PhotoCollage, a single picture is now
worth a thousand more pictures.
As Ronnie Miranda, the President/Webmaster of Storm Visualization &
Imaging (www.stormviz.com) and the man behind this groundbreaking
computer technology, would put it: "We gave new meaning and added an
exponential value to the old cliché: A picture is worth a thousand
words."
In the United States, this technique (called PhotoMosaics) was
originally developed by Robert Silvers as a research project when he was
a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Media Lab in 1995.
For the Philippine market, Miranda is developing this process as
PhotoCollage -- a technique in which thousands of tiny micro-images are
arranged to subtly blend together and recreate the details of a single
photograph.
Popular examples - all created by Robert Silvers -- of this computer
design technique was the Newsweek cover of Princess Diana, the Sports
Illustrated cover of Tiger Woods (March 16, 1998), Life magazine's 60th
anniversary cover issue, and the poster of the Jim Carrey movie The
Truman Show.
Princess Diana's Newsweek cover (December 22, 1997) consisted of
hundreds or so scanned pictures of flowers that were then artfully
arranged to form a stunning photograph of the dearly missed Queen of
Hearts. The Truman Show poster, on the other hand, comprised of various
movie stills that when put together formed the smiling portrait of ace
comedian Jim Carrey. A portrait of Marilyn Monroe was created from Life
covers from the past for Life magazine's 60th anniversary issue (October
1996) .
The technology, says Miranda, "is now available commercially in the
Philippines." Miranda explains that PhotoCollage is a combination of
traditional artist techniques and a custom computer program.
The traditional artist technique is called tiling/mosaics in which the
main image is created by using tiles or mosaics. "The smaller
micro-images make up these tiles," Miranda adds. "Also, an optional
technique is to tint some images to create a smoother blending of
micro-images."
Meanwhile, the PhotoCollage program "compares all the available images
with each grid of the main photo. The program then picks the tile that
is the most visually similar to that particular area. If the number of
micro-images in the collection is very limited, it will then tint the
closest match to come up with the appropriate tile," Miranda elaborates.
As a powerful visual image, Miranda believes that the PhotoCollage can
either serve as a marketing tool (for magazine covers, posters,
billboards, and advertisements) or as a unique gift. It is guaranteed to
grab everyone's attention with the quality and visual power of each
image. Its uniqueness lies in its "visual impact" as an approach in
selling a product.
A PhotoCollage can convey more ideas and information, with just one
powerful image consisting of a thousand more micro-images. "Furthermore,
because of the visual impact, people will be awed and stare at the
image," Miranda asserts. "As such, they would never forget your product
because they would always remember the PhotoCollage poster."
Miranda shares his own personal experience with the PhotoCollage
technique. During his stay in Vancouver, Canada, he had some posters
printed at Kinko's -- a major business center that provides
photocopying, business printing services, scanning, online services,
document creation services, among others, with over 900 retail locations
in the United
States, Canada, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the
United Arab Emirates, China and Great Britain. Among those posters were
PhotoCollage posters of Megastar Sharon Cuneta (created from among 1,000
images of various episodes of Sharon) and Concert Queen Pops Fernandez.
(featuring 500 photos of Pops from her concert performances).
"The manager and staff of Kinko's were so impressed by the uniqueness
and style of the posters," Miranda recalls. "They thought the Sharon and
Pops posters were among the best posters they've printed. So they asked
me to make a PhotoCollage poster for them."
The Kinko's poster created by Miranda is now displayed prominently in
their Canadian store.