How to Create Mosaic Effect in Photoshop

The purpose of this tutorial is to show you how to get one very interesting mosaic effect in Photoshop.

Final Image Preview

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Step 1

Create a new document with 1000px width and 600px height. Fill it with black color (#000000) and update layer name to Background (click twice on layer name).

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Step 2

For this tutorial we need to create an action. Make Actions Panel active with Window > Actions (or Alt+F9) and press Create new Action button on lower window options.

After that create a new layer and apply Filter > Render > Clouds. Change layer mode to Screen for this layer.

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Step 3

Apply Filter > Pixelate > Mosaic with following settings:

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Step 4

Apply Filter > Sketch> Reticulation with following settings:

Now we need to stop recording our new action. Press Stop on Action panel. Make sure tht your new Action only has the following items: Make layer, Clouds, Set current layer, Mosaic and Reticulation. If you have more items remove them and if you have any missing delete Action and recreate it.

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Step 5

With our Action created, we are going to create mosaic bricks. We need to apply our Action about 6-7 times more until all black spots will disappear on canvas.

The result should be similar to this:

Merge all layers together except background layer by selecting them and using Ctrl+E. After merge, change layer mode to Screen again. We now have only two layers: background layer and mosaic layer.

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Step 6

We now are going to add glow. Apply Filter > Sketch > Photocopy on mosaic layer (Detail: 24 and Darkness:1).

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Step 7

Invert layer colors by pressing Ctrl+I.

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Step 8

Set Auto Contrast by going to Image > Auto Constrat (on older Photoshop versions it´s inside Image > Adjustments).

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Step 9

Create new layer and change layer mode to Overlay. Select Brush Tool (soft round brush with about 80 pixels) and apply brush on edges of dark squares with white color.

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Step 10

Merge all layers except background layer by selecting them and using Ctrl+E. Duplicate mosaic layer again with Ctrl+J.

On duplicated layer apply Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Change layer mode to Overlay.

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Step 11

Duplicate current layer with Ctrl+J to increase effect.

Merge all mosaic layers except background layer.

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Step 12

On this step we are going to bring some color to mosaic layer. Apply Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation with following settings:

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Step 13

Time to add some perspective to the mosaic. Use Edit > Transform > Perspective to transform mosaic to something similar to what i did on image below.

To remove too much blurred areas if you have any, use Crop Tool to fix them.

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Final Image

We may add some additional colors to our mosaic. Add a new layer and change layer mode to Overlay. Set up foreground color as purple (#8a00ff) and with Brush Tool selected (soft round brush with 300px) apply on right side of mosaic. Finally set up foreground color to blue (#002cff) and apply Brush Tool on left side to increase brightness and add some glow. And now this tutorial is complete.

Posted in: photoshop