Extended photomosaic with QR code capability

A novel photomosaic art with three-layer information is proposed in this paper. In addition to the over-arching image can be seen from a distance and a matrix of individual images when looked closely, a QR code can be accessed by taking a picture of the whole photomosaic using public QR code scanners. In the proposed scheme, a tile image classification procedure is carefully designed to dispatch appropriate tile images from image database to several tile images sets for different types of blocks, which generates photomosaic with robust QR code and high quality of over-arching image. The Fast Library for Approximate Nearest Neighbor is applied to design the best representative tile searching procedure, which greatly reduces the photomosaic rendering time. The proposed method endows the conventional photomosaic with QR code capability and brings photomosaic from pure visual information exhibition to multimedia data linkage, which increases the feasibility and potential of applying photomosaic work in diverse applications.