Pixelize is a program I wrote that will use many scaled down images to try to duplicate, as closely as possible, another image.

Pixelize works by splitting up the image you want rendered (or duplicated) into a grid of small rectangular areas. Each area is analyzed, and replaced with an image chosen from a large database of images. Pixelize tries to pick images that best match each area.

Pixelize works best when it can choose images from a very large database of images. With about 1000 images, Pixelize can do a reasonable job.

Here are some example images that Pixelize has created shown next to the original: (These were created using a database of about 2500 images.)

Pixelize is written in C and uses the GIMP Toolkit (GTK) and the Imlib library on top of X11. Pixelize was developed under Linux but has also been tested under SunOS and Solaris. It should work with almost any UNIX, though.

Here is what Pixelize looks like when first started:

Try it out. Download Pixelize (current version 1.0.0):