Photographic mosaic

In the field of photographic imaging, a photographic mosaic (also known under the term Photomosaic, a portmanteau of photo and mosaic, trademarked by Runaway Technology, Inc.) is a picture (usually a photograph) that has been divided into (usually equal sized) rectangular sections, each of which is replaced with another photograph of appropriate average color. When viewed at low magnifications, the individual pixels appear as the primary image, while close examination reveals that the image is in fact made up of many hundreds or thousands of smaller images. They are a computer created type of montage.

Originally, the term photomosaic referred to compound photographs created by stitching together a series of adjacent pictures of a scene. Space scientists have been assembling mosaics of this kind since at least as early as the Soviet Union space satellite missions to the moon in the late 1950s.