After setting up our mosaic session, designing our billboard, and setting up our printer, we're now ready to start the mosaic. Please make sure you do all those other steps before you start!

1.

Navigate to the Live Progress tab.

At the bottom left you'll see a checkbox for Automatic Printing. If you check it, your images will be printed as soon as they're ready. If you're just testing the mosaic, I would suggest leaving it unchecked. You can also manually select an image in the printer queue and use the Print Selected button to manually print each individual sticker image.

The Event Active slider button on the top-right of the application will start the mosaic. If you have images in the watched folder already, the mosaic will start building immediately. If you don't have images yet, the software will wait until they're added to the watched folder. 

For a quick test, you can simply copy images into your watched folder before you start. 350 sample images are included when installing the software, and they can be found under Desktop\Muse Mosaic\Session\inputwatched. Don't worry, you can easily reset the mosaic by going to the Home tab and clicking Clear and Restart Mosaic.

Once pressed, the Event Active button will slide left, pausing the mosaic and allowing you to do just that. If you press the slider button for Event Active, the slider button will start right and resume mosaic creation.

2.

Press the Event Active slider button on the top-right.

Images will start filling the box on the right, and prints will go to the print queue on the bottom left. You'll also see the last image added to the print queue (and to the mosaic) in the upper left.

3.

Press the Event Active slider button to pause the mosaic so that we can have a look around.

If you didn't have Automatic Printing checked, you'll see several items in the print queue. You can choose which one you want to print by selecting the image and clicking Print Selected. If your print layout is set up to have multiple images per page, your print queue could look something like this:

Move your mouse over the mosaic progress on the right. When you do so, you'll see the row and column coordinates for that image at the very bottom of the software window to the left of the date. This can be useful if you're trying to find a specific image. You can also zoom in on the mosaic preview by un-checking Fill to fit.

4.

Press the Event Active slider button to resume mosaic creation and wait for the mosaic to finish. When it's done, you'll see a pop-up letting you know that a completed mosaic image has been saved to the desktop. The file is named Mosaic_Completed.bmp, and we usually give that to the client at the end of the event.

Congrats! Your mosaic is done.

5.

If you want to reset the mosaic, but keep the same folders, go to the Home tab and click Clear and Restart Mosaic (no need to make a backup unless you want to pick up where you left off). If you want to start a new mosaic with empty folders, go to the Home tab and click Create a New Session.

6.

The software has many more features that will be useful to you, like a Mosaic Player that can display the mosaic digitally on a screen, moderation tools that let you curate the images before they appear in the mosaic (great for hashtag prints), etc., and we will go over those in other tutorials. However, there are a couple of things that you might want to know now.

If you want to change the pace at which images appear in the mosaic (if you already have images in the folder when you start), go to the Admin Menu -> Extra Images Tab and look at the Dynamic Optimizations section. Check the box labeled Set Target # images/minute and you can adjust the rate that images appear on the mosaic.

You can change the size of the final, saved mosaic image by going to Event Admin > Save Mosaic Image. The section on the left allows you to adjust the width of each mosaic tile and gives you the option to automatically save the image when the mosaic is completed.

That's it for the Muse Mosaic Getting Started series! Next, I would suggest going to the Mosaic Player tutorials to learn how to show your mosaic on a screen.

As always, please contact support@laphotoparty.com if you have any issues with the software.

We hope you enjoy using Muse Mosaic!