Image 4: The amounts per bead colour for a 48 different colours (multiple screenshots to show all of them).

From this table you can see that although many colours are very well used intensely, you could still see very similar colours. For instance S109 and S110 are similar, S140 and S142 are also similar, and also S18 and S155. Although these colours are actually different, their subtle colour differences would not be needed here. So we can discard them and try again, now with less colours. To make the exercise even more challenging, we also discard colours S85 (like S146), S116 (like S118), S113 (like S78), S147 (like S119), S83 (like S41) and S159 (like S07), and some others. Then we run again. Now we have only 35 colours left, and the result is different, but only marginally (and prone to personal taste). Picture below, left: the original 48 colours, right the same size and amount, but now with just 35 colours.

Image 5: Left the original result from Image 3. Right: the manual colour reduction to 35 colours.

Another way of selecting less colours, is to set a maximum to the amount of colours used. To set the maximum of colours you need to press the Colour matching button. On the left you now see 'Limit to # of colours' and 'Speed to iterate to target'. Both will be used in this approach. In the image below we have set the target amount of colours to 24. The left image was created by only activating the 'Limit to # of colours' checked, where the application uses a smart algorithm to immediately reduce the colours (in this case down to 24 in one step). In the right image you see the result where we also iterated down to 24, with a slow speed (max 5 colours at the time, gradually reducing the colour reduction speed to one by one). With each iteration the least used colour is replaced by an alternative colour. We counted 12 iterations, from 48 down to 24, and the result is quite good when comparing it to the image on the left. It doesn't however have the brilliance of the discarded outspoken colours when we use more colours in the mosaic (like the result shown in Image 5).

Image 6: Left the one-step colour reduction. Right: the iterative colour reduction. 

A third approach to reducing colour is to use a special set of colours, e.g. from one of the available sets of Artkal, e.g. the 'ARTKAL-S 24 Colorbox Set CS24' set. We have included the special colour sets as well for the 15, 24, 25, 36 and 48 colours that is provided by Artkal. These are conveniently preinstalled. Below you see the results of 3 colour sets: 48, 36 and 24, and consider yourself which result is the best, and what colour set you should select. The 48 and 36 colour sets were iterated down to 24 colours, while the 24 colour set already had a maximum of 24 colours. In this example the size was reduced to 2x2 pegboards of 29 pegs each, so less than 3400 beads.

Image 7: Three different approaches to reducing the amount of colours used.

Finally, and although a different picture is used, here we show a nice result with the basic set of 'just' 15 colours.

Image 8: Two simple images with juist a few colours required.

Although the mosaic is small, just 1x 29-peg board for each dino, the amount of beads is almost sufficient for this nice image. Step back 1 few meters and you'll clearly see the details of the dino (seems a little odd by stepping away you see more, but that's how the brain works....it fills in the rest of the image). It was made with the simplest of settings, and applying the feature 'Use cartoon colours' set to maximum of 15) and 'Smart resize (keep sharp edges)' in the Preferences. And that's basically it.

In the S-series Artkal offers several ready-made sets, ranging from 15 to 48 different colours. These colours are subsets of the vast range of 160 colours, and are strategically selected, to be used in as many colourful 'mosaics' as possible. In the following image we have arranged the colour sets for you:

Image 9: Five differetn colour sets compared. Top to bottom: 48, 36, 24, 19 and 15 colours.  

When you apply these colours to a create, e.g. a cartoon image, these will be the results:

Image 10: Comparison of 5 different colour sets for a simple cartoon image.

The original colours are extremely well preserved. The 19-colour set however has a slightly different 'skin' colour. All the other sets can very well follow the colourful image. To test a more challenging image, we will now use a colourful image, with many subtle tones.

Image 11: Comparison of 5 different colour sets for a complex multi-colour image, with subtle shades and colours.

As we can expect, the 48 colour set is now more fitting, and the 15 and 19 somewhat fall short of the subtle colour tones. At first sight all sets perform pretty good, but when looking closely you can see the superioity of the 48 colour set over e.g. the 15 and even the 24 colour set. See below for some apparent detail differences.

Image 12: Comparison of a colour sensitive area, shows with 36, 48 and 15 colours (Left to Right).

In both examples the rich palette of 48 colours provides a better true colour, recognized by the subtle tonal differences. The reds and blues are less well represented by the 15, and also by the 24, though the overall impression of 24 is still quite good. The resulting image has all 48 colours used, where the pastel tints make up about 25% of the total! As an impressive example of the soft colours of the 48 set we finally show how a truly challenging image can still be made with these colours:

Image 13: The mosaic of a truly challenging image, where many different hue, saturation and lighness aspects are found.

It's however always a matter of taste, what kind of image you like best, and what you can afford to buy. The cost of the dragon image above is appr. 24 euro, 5170 beads are required, about half the amount of the 48 colour set (having appr. 11100 pieces), and considered to be a moderate cost, but excluding the cost of 8 pegboards (or one pegboard, used 8 times).

Lesson 4: Creating transparent sources

In many cases you will start with a 'normal' source image, i.e. an image with no transparency. A typical image is saved in the JPEG or JPG file format. These formats, like other 24-bit BMP formats, do not have a transparency channel (only, R-G-B channels). Another file format is PNG, which can contain a transparency channel. In addition, shaped fusion beads are preferred my many bead mosaic creators. Also shaped beads typically are created for children, by children. For instance, a funny cartoon figure as a source should lead to a cartoon bead image only, excluding the background.

In this lesson we will demonstrate how we can use transparent sources (already at start, e.g. a PNG image) and how to create a new transparent image using Brickaizer (from a JPG image). We will start with the most common situation: we have an image that is not transparent. In lesson 5 we demonstrate how to work with transparent sources. You find the transparency controls via the main menu 'Special functions' > 'Colour filters', the middle section ('Filters') has the transparency controls at the bottom. To open the dedicated transparency panel, click on the white box on the right. This white box represents your selected chroma-key (or: pixel that must be made transparent).

1. We edited the as-is image, and refined the transparent area by erasing the left-over pixels outside the lion's black cartoon-esque outer lines.
2. We used the as-is image, without any editing.
3. We selected the black lines of the as-is image, and created a much thicker line, using the selection expansion tool in Photoshop.

In the image below you can see the results. The second image (#18) shows details of the bead mosaic.

Image 17: The result of the three approaches. From left to right: #1, #2 and #3.

Image 18: Details of the lion's tail, from each of the three approaches. From left to right: #1, #2 and #3.

Although not so very well showing in Image 17, the transparent area is not so sharp. The edge seems to have many gray and even white beads, as if the transparency faded from fully transparent to fully opague. As a consequence the beads are slightly coloured, and are showing in the image in the middle. By better removing these semi-transparent pixels, we can already improve a lot (less white beads in the left image). But by thickening the black cartoon lines, we even achieved one-bead-wide lines, and thicker at places. The result on the right is clearly much better and pronounced.

So, although Brickaizer can remove some transparent pixels, it's not an image editor, and the enthusiastic beads artist should perhaps prework the source image, to avoid stray beads at places where it's not wanted. Simple pre-editing can however be very effective with transparent sources. This lion just has 4 colours, so we also excluded stray colours, leaving only the 4 key colours in the palette. This way also stray beads/colours can effectively be avoided. A last step was made by also recolouring some beads in the editor ('The Builder').

Lesson 6: Using Artkal beads for human portraits

Many bead artists are looking for the correct colours to create human portraits. The challenge is always the colour of the skin, and to avoid colour patches of equal colour. We will demonstrate how to effectively apply the most extensive colour set of fusion beads from Artkal how to make very good human portarit bead artwork. We will also demonstrate how to effectively reduce the number of colours to still get a very good impression on a human portrait. Finally, we will show how to create a portrait with a range of hues, instead of true colours or black and white.

The start of every human bead artistry is a good image. Images with blueish teints, or wrong light (e.g. too much sunset-red or purple), and also images that were made with a flash are usually not suitable. Images with very little contrast (too dark, too light) are usually not suitable, nor are images with too much background 'noise' (e.g. a plant behind the person, or a building, or similar colourful or rich of contrast). However, it's a matter of taste, and we leave it up to the artist to make a good choice. The images that we use in this lesson were taken from https://www.pexels.com/search/people, where each of these images are offered in the Creative Common license. Quote:

"It's hard to understand complex licenses that is why all photos on Pexels are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. This means the pictures are completely free to be used for any legal purpose.

• The pictures are free for personal and even for commercial use.
• You can modify, copy and distribute the photos.
• All without asking for permission or setting a link to the source. So, attribution is not required.

The only restriction is that identifiable people may not appear in a bad light or in a way that they may find offensive, unless they give their consent. You should also make sure the depicted content (people, logos, private property, etc.) is suitable for your application and doesn't infringe any rights."

Image 19: Six examples of different images of people, on a 50x50 pegboard, 48 colours set.

From the six examples above, it is clear that creating a portrait from an image, by just pressing the 'Create' button leads to quite different results. The skin colour is very different in these images, as is the overall colour and saturation, teint and lightness. Also backgrounds are quite different, ranging from dark gray, to brightly coloured and even 'things', like a flower wall. From these images it is clearly demonstrated that creating a person with beads, requires some preparation.

Image 20: Studio quality image for next staps

We will show how to create a good looking beads portrait by using studio quality image (image 20). The source size is just 214 x 214 pixels (!), big enough for a 145x145 bead artwork. The examples in image 19 above are 50x50 beads, as a comparison, we will continue with a 145x145 beads size (roughly 72.5 cm x 72.5 cm physical size for 5 mm beads). Both images are created first, as a good comparison of the above bead artistry quality (image 21).

Image 21: A basic beads mosaic ('just press the Create button'). Left 50x50 beads. Right 145x145 beads, in 54 colours.

The first thing we'd like to set is the dithering. This is a well-known technique to reduce the number of colours by blending pixels in the image in such a way that with a limited amount of colours a wide gamut of colour impression is created. Very much like an inkjet printer, that is using only 4 or 8 colour toners for photo quality prints. We show two results: the one after we only changed the 'Colour engine' to 'Colour dithered' (found in the 'Colour setting' panel), while the selected colours from the right image 21 were still active. The second time we also reset the entire colour selection, so all 158 colours could be chosen in the process of dithering.

Image 22: Left: only change the dithering method (preselection of colours still active). Right: fresh new mosaic with dithering.

The difference is almost invisible. The image on the left has 54 colours, on the right has 67. The 54 colours were preselected from our previous run, so apparently when all colours become available, 13 colours more will be used. This simple trick of first use normal colour selection, and then only add dithering, is a nice way to start an initial colour reduction step.

We will now start reducing the amount of colours. We start by setting a maximum value to the number of colours: 36. This is done via the 'Colour setting' panel, where the value to the now checked box 'Limit to # of colours' is set to 36. Then we also increased the minimum amount of beads, as a percentage of the total: 0.5% (in this case 112 beads as a minimum amount). Both results are shown in image 23.

Image 23: Left: set the colour amount to 36. Right: also set the minimum amount of beads to 0.5% (= 112 beads).

The difference is clearly visible: the reds of the mouth have disappeared (not enough beads required), but instead the overal teint has been subtly changed to a nice hue (that is: we liked it). Although we have drifted from the ideal colours, we found inspiration of changing the overall colour of the image, without changing so much of the person's identity and radiance.

A next logical step is to further reduce the number of colours. We use the same settings as in the last used (image 23, right), but now we set the maximum amount of colours to 24 (was 36). The result is an even blander result (less hue, less contrast, less outspoken features). To repair the 'damage' done, we do a final test by increasing the contrast, and increasing the saturation of the source image: +5 and +7 (this is done via the main menu 'Special functions' > 'Colour filters'). Below you see the results.

Image 24: Left: set the colour amount to 24. Right: also increase contrast and saturation (+5 and +7).

Also the reds are back again, the mouth is a blurry red, less subtle. This can be repaired by using less saturation or contrast, or correcting it in the 'Builder', but we choose to stop here, and follow a different route: applying a hue. Since the image has nice sepia tones, we put all settings back to normal, except the colour dither (almost a must for portrait mosaic). Then we activated the 'Use cartoon colours', set to a value of 8. A very nice result was found, where sepia tones are showing a rich palette of colours. A final test was done to create a different hue: blueish tones. We used the colour sorting feature (also part of the 'Colour matching' panel), and sorted the dataset on 'Hue'. Since many colours were already 'off', we unchecked all colours, except the blue tones (S105 - S137, after sorting). Then we increased the contrast slightly (+2, to assure a white background) and created the mosaic. The result is very nice:

Image 24: Left: use cartoon colours active, 8 colours. Right: only blue tones, with extra contrast of +2.

It's a matter of taste to like these portraits. However, we hoped to have provided some examples how to effectively create good looking portraits, and how to play with the colour tones. Perhaps one last word of advice: start small, like 150 beads as a max size, and when you have found the perfect colour balance, first save your data in a project, and thèn increase the size. From there you have a perfect starting point to further tweak the end result.