Important is to know that only from this tab the settings can be fixed ('freeze'), and unfixed ('unfreeze'). The reason for freezing the application critical parameters is to assure that during an event the mosaic data does not get corrupted by different settings, or by system issues (e.g. a power down, or empty battery), or a serious system issue (BSoD still happnes...). The application will successfully retrieve the data, but only when all the settings are identical. Event Mosaic Creator has the possibility to save settings in a project file, and re-open this project. But in case this was not done, or overwritten, deleted, etc, then to get the event back in place is almost impossible without knowing the correct parameters. Henze the freeze (= critical parameters are disabled, and cannot be changed), and unfreeze (all parameters are enabled to be changed). In case of an unfreeze action, the user has to be aware what unfreeze means, so the user is warned to be very, very careful when changing settings during an active event.

Non-critical parameters, such as colour tuning parameters, remain active since they are only used per image, and will not affect the mosaic integrity. Although not recommended, to tweak mosaic settings these enabled parameters are useful to find the best setting, while the mosaic builds up. Once satisfied, the user is recommended to first freeze the parameters, then save the settings in a project file (via the menu: 'Project' > 'Save as project'). And then run the show.

1. Mosaic Settings

Most details are described in the tutorial page (here), but the remaining is described here.

• Basic parameters: described in the tutorial.
• Colour tuning parameters: described in the tutorial.
• Special features: described in the tutorial.
• Special features. Random winners are row-column locations that are selected for a prize. The person who #tagged the image that will appear to be placed at this location will receive a prize. The prize is not part of Event Mosaic Creator application. It's entirely up to event admin/owner to allow winners, and provide give-away trinkets or whatever is the prize. The selected locations are also stored in the project (for resume), and are visible in the Detach Viewers tab. When unchecked the winner's locations are not selected (inactive) and no prize winners are selected. The Random logo will randomly select the logo image, as specified in the folder locations tab. The Library ID for Mosaic test is a selector which internal library will be used to create a mosaic preview image. It's using low resolution images, so the visual quality is moderate, but the colour impression may be helpful to evaluate how much blend and colorize might be needed for the real thing.
• Image analysis and corrections. Here you'll find an intelligent image analysis option, where the image in analysed for an empty edge, e.g. when an image in frames on a white background, In such cases the image colours are 'diluted' with white, affecting the placement options. When the option Avoid solid colour edges is active, the image is scanned for a certain percentage from the edge (Max percentage of edge) and similarity of edge colour (RGB similarity range (byte)). The latter setting is used to find small variations of colour at the edge, e.g. caused by jpeg compression. The value indicated in this setting is how much (out of 255 bytes) the colour values for red, green and blue should be considered of equal colour.
  
  An example is shown above: the top images are unprocessed, while the bottom images are processed with the default settings. Not all images can be effectively processed, e.g. images with text. This text can hardly be detected as text, and will therefore remain part of the image. The white background may however still create large colour differences. Text images should therefore be excluded, or only allowed when large very light areas needs to be covered with images. It's the responsibility of the event admin to filter out these images, or clearly indicate what kind of images must be #tagged by the event visitors.

Cropping a part of the source image

To only use a part of the source image to create the mosaic, you can select (crop) a part from the source image as shown in the interface. You need your mouse to select a part of the image, left-top to right-bottom. It's important to understand how this cropping works: only the part that you select from the source image will be used for the mosaic. The amount of tiles (set horizontal, vertical will follow) is set by the user, but the vertical amount is determined by the aspect ratio of the cropped part. Just cropping a part might result in a weird amount of tiles, because the tiles shape doesn't allow for a neatly cropped part, and will slightly deform the source image to meet the amount of images. So: closely keep an eye on the indicated amount of tiles (it actively refreshes itself from the selection you are making). Keep on selecting an area to both satisfy your cropped part and the amount of images. To select a square part, press the ALT key while selecting a part of the image. To deselect a cropping area, doubleclick in an area that is not selected, and the selection will disappear (and the full image will now be set as the mosaic). Take a look at the images below, and see how the cropping is done, and how the size, amount and cropped area together determine the final size of the mosaic.

Setting the tile aspect ratio

By default, the printed images are square. But the application allows for rectangular shapes as well, both in portrait and in landscape orientations. The width:height ratio of each printed #tag image can be set by the 'Ratio w/h' paremeter, in steps of 0.01. The default is square (or ratio = 1.00). A value smaller than one means portrait images, a value higher than 1 means landscape images. When this ratio is changed, also the amount of vertically placed images will change, in order to meet the dimensions of the source image. The number of images on the horizontal will not change with changing 'w/h ratio'. When e.g. landscape is selected (> 1), the vertical amount will increase, since the height decreases. The amount on the horizontal is still the measure for the final mosaic size, so the amount on the vertical size is always following the source image size and the ratio settings, and can therefore not be set manually. The gray square on the right of this settings will change with the value, to reflect the actual #tag image size ratio. The ratio change can be combined with the cropping. The application will automatically take both parameters into account.

Note: the gray square reflects a landscape shape by increasing its horizontal size. Please do not take this as 'the horizontal tile size will increase'. It doesn't, it's simply a more effective way to show the relative tile size.

How to assure a proper size setting.

In many cases the source image does not exacly fit with the mosaic tile size. For eaxmple, we have a source image of 800x500 pixels, and want 90 images on the horizontal. Ideally, we should then have 500/800*90 = 56.25 images. It will round-off to the nearest number, so 56 images. When using 4x4" square images, the actual mosaic size will be 90x4" x 56x4" = 360" x 224". The original source image (of enlarged to this size) would actually be 360"x 219" (350*500/800 = 218.75) because the source size does not match with the amount of images. So, thesource image will be slightly stretched to match with the output size.

This is acceptable when a large amount of images is used, since 224" or 219" is not that much that it becomes clearly visible (it's covered in images anyway), but for relatively small amounts (e.g. 20 images or less) the deformation can be visible. One way to counter the difference is to weak the amount with the aspect ratio to make the match better. The consequence is that Billboards might not fit (some users use prepared Billboards, only suitable for square images), or the multiple prints on a sinple page needs careful post-processing cutting. But it can be done. The tweak in this case would be to make the images slightly portrait or landscape (either way will work). To set the correct value, you need to do some maths in e.g. Excel to assure a proper amount and size ratio setting. You can do the maths yourself, we found these settings to match with the example: 90 Hor tiles, size ratio of 0.96, so 54 tiles on the vertical (90/800*500*0.96 = 54), or size ratio 1.12, leading to 63 images on the vertical.

2. File locations