The Mosaic filter renders a mosaic from the current layer. The filter bases color selection on the image, and renders user controlled tiles that reflect the layer's color properties. There are three Tiling Primitives, and numerous options to change the look of the rendered tiles according to need.
Mosaic Settings
Antialiasing outputs aliased tiles in the final render. Antialiasing can produce a higher quality of render, but will slow the render process.
Pitted Surfaces creates a pitted appearance on the rendered tiles similar to rough concrete, or cement. The effect is characterized by many small dots on each of the tiles.
FG/BG Lighting renders the mosaic using the foreground and background colors that are currently selected in the Toolbox. The foreground color changes the lighting source color, and the background color affects the color of the lines between the tiles.
Tiling Primitives sets the shape of the tile. Squares sets the tiles as squares. Hexagons makes the rendered tiles hexagonal in shape. Octagons & Squares renders the tiles as a combination of octagons, and squares that interconnect well. These primitives may loose all recognizable shape after further adjustments from the Tile Neatness slider.
Tile Size increases or decreases the pixel size of the tile. Smaller settings result in more tiles, and larger settings produce larger tiles. This setting can make significant differences depending on the image size.
Tile Height adjusts the amount of light that is rendered onto the tile. A higher setting here will result in a more rounded tile.
Tile Spacing settings either widen or shrink the gap between the tiles. The minimum setting is "1", which represents a one pixel line between the tiles.
The Tile Neatness slider alters the randomness, or indeed, the neatness of the tile shapes. A setting of "0.0" renders perfectly shaped tiles, and a higher setting will render increasingly more randomized tile shapes.
Light Direction sets the direction from which the lighting color is rendered onto the tiles. A setting of "0" will render the tiles with light approaching from the left of the image. "180" will render the light as if coming from the right. "90" is directly above the image window.
Color Variation changes the amount of color that the renderer will alter for the tiles. That is, this setting when set low, will respect the image coloring, and when set high, will alter the colors for each tile.