zumyn is a free tool that allows people to build a photographic mosaic using their own photos.

A photographic mosaic is any collection of photos that are arranged in a way that when viewed from a distance, they resemble one overall picture. You can see examples on our What We Do page.

zumyn mosaics are a great way of displaying an entire collection of photos in an interesting way. They make excellent personalised gifts for people, and can be used as a way of marking an occasion such as a wedding, graduation, anniversary or to celebrate a shared accomplishment. They are a novel alternative to end of year school photos, or group shots from large events.

Yes. We provide prints of your mosaics in a range of sizes and types. Larger prints can be ordered as well by contacting us. Printing options are listed in detail on our pricing page. All prints are delivered direct to your door and currently, postage within the UK is offered free.

In short, you need a lot of photos. In general, the more photos you can provide, the more accurate the overall mosaic image will be. You also need to provide the photo that the overall mosaic is to resemble.

The amount of photos required for a mosaic varies depending on a number of factors such as the detail in the overall mosaic, and ultimately the eye of the beholder. In general though, we would expect to need at least 1000 photos. If you don't have enough photos though, you can always import photos of facebook friends, or use our photo library to supplement your collection.

Yes, our importer tool allows you to select as many of your photosets as you wish from your flickr account and automatically import all the photos within them.

Yes, our importer tool allows you to select which of your facebook friends you would like to import photos of. We then collect all the photos with that person tagged in them and automatically import them into your mosaic.

We have put together a library of photos that are licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence that allows for their use in mosaics. These have been arranged into themed collections such as cats, dogs etc.

You are certainly free to build a mosaic using less photos and see for yourself if you are happy with the results. We have had some examples that have worked nicely with less, but sometimes the results aren't satisfactory. zumyn is free to use to build mosaics, so you have nothing to lose in trying. You can also give access to friends and family to enable them to contribute towards your mosaic, and the extra photos will also help you reach the best possible overall image.

Unlike most (if not all) other photographic mosaic providers, we believe that a top quality mosaic should not require duplication of photos in it. We also believe that all contributed photos should be included, and so our mosaics are built in a way that every photo contributed gets placed somewhere in the mosaic - guaranteed. This is a very complicated process and as such, benefits from a large pool of photos, but we feel the results are well worth it.

zumyn has been designed to make the process as straightforward as possible for you. Simply select "create" from the menu above and follow the instructions. You will be asked to provide the overall photo that you wish to use and select a couple of options. Then it is a case of you, and anyone else you wish, uploading photos to your mosaic. To reduce the time taken to upload photos, we use an uploading tool (available directly within your browser) to upload large numbers of photos at a time. Resized and compressed versions of your photos are sent, reducing the time it would take to upload by over 90% in most cases.

Yes, you can change the target as often as you wish until you are happy.

No. zumyn uses an activex/java uploader component to allow you to send us your photos, but these components are all contained within your web browser and you don't need to install anything.

We can handle numerous images formats including JPEG, BMP and TIFF files. Most digital cameras will save in the JPEG format (either with .jpg or .jpeg at the end of the file names) and so most users should be able to use the uploader without any difficulty.

Photographic mosaics are a grid arrangement of photos and so they all need to be the same shape. Photos in zumyn mosaics use the most common digital photo ratio of 4:3 (i.e., there are 4 pixels in width for every 3 pixels of your image height). In the case that your photos are not in this ratio, the zumyn system will automatically crop them for you to the correct size - however, you will have the option to rotate and/or re-crop your photos after thay have been uploaded using the image editing tools on the site.

You can if you wish, but the image uploading tool will handle all this for you automatically and so there is not really any need. All uploaded images should be at least 240 pixels across the shortest edge. Even the lowest resolution setting on a modern digital camera will far exceed this requirement.

No, in order to be able to view the zoomed in version on the website, we have to use a very heavily compressed and scaled down version, and as a result it can look blocky and blurred when zoomed in close. When you double-click on an individual tile, this represents the approximate quality level on the final printed product.

Once you are happy with your mosaic, you can purchase a print using our online order form. Prints start from £39 for a "standard" size high quality photographic print. Full details on the available options can be found on our pricing page. Delivery within the UK is free for all products.

Unfortunately, the cost of providing the zumyn service is recovered through the sale of prints, and as such we do not make the high resolution versions of the mosaics available to print at home.

Absolutely, please contact us to discuss your requirements.

Some products can be shipped anywhere in the world, whilst others are limited to selected european countries. Please see our delivery details page for more information.

If you have a specific size requirement then please feel free to contact us with the details and we'll be happy to provide you with a custom quote.

We might be able to assist you in locating some licence free images for use in your mosaic, but it depends on the circumstances. Please contact us to discuss your requirements.

If you are unable to upload your photos yourself for some reason, then we may be able to help you, but it would be at an additional cost. Please contact us to discuss your requirements.

No. This is a service we do not currently provide. You may find it available in high street photographic shops.

You can request that your password be emailed to you on the forgotten password page.

Every time a photo from our library is displayed in a mosaic, a link is included to the owner's page on flickr. Printed mosaics come complete with a list of URL's for the owners of photos that are used in that mosaic. If you are the owner of any of the photos used in our library and would rather it wasn't included, or would like to change where the attribution links point to, please contact us.