Mosaic Mate

A dedicated tool that performs inverse alpha-blending calculations to restore hidden details from images obscured by semi-transparent mosaics.

Overview

Mosaic Mate enables you to systematically restore and unmask images that have been obscured with semi-transparent mosaic pixelation.

The restoration process is similar to playing Sudoku or chess: By carefully adjusting blend opacity and color values, this tool helps you to recover the original image details hidden beneath each mosaic tile with pixel-perfect precision. However, results depend on mosaic parameters, image quality and your strategy; perfect restoration is not guaranteed.

Features

• Smart Restoration: Auto guess blending opacity and color from surrounding pixels
• Interactive Tile Editing: Select and adjust individual mosaic tiles with real-time preview
• Flexible Grid Control: Adjust grid size and offset to perfectly match your image's mosaic pattern
• Color & Opacity Tuning: Fine-grained controls for blend opacity and color gain to ensure seamless integration

Requirements

• Qt 6.2 or later (primarily developed and tested on Qt 6.10)
• A modern desktop OS: Windows, macOS, or Linux (Qt-supported platforms)

Getting Started

Prebuilt Binaries

Download the latest executable from the Releases page.

Run from Source

1. Get and install Qt with Qt Online Installer.
2. Clone the repository to your local machine:

   git clone https://github.com/Schwi-AI/MosaicMate.git
   cd MosaicMate

3. Start the application:
   • If you have Qt Creator installed, open MosaicMate.qmlproject located at the repository root.
   • You can also run the main QML file using the QML runtime that ships with Qt.

     qml src/main.qml

Usage

1. Click the Open button to load an image.
2. Adjust Grid Size and Grid Offset in the sidebar to match the mosaic pattern. Click the Apply button to initialize grid settings.

   Please note that all your previous unsaved changes will be lost!

3. Select a tile that is covered by a mosaic in the image view.
4. Tweak Blend Opacity and Blend Color / Gain in the sidebar until the selected tile visually matches its surrounding area.
5. Repeat steps 3–4 for each mosaic-covered tile until the entire image appears cohesive.
6. Click the Save button to write the edited image to disk.

Tips & Best Practices

• Work from the tiles that have the most reliable neighboring context.
• Use lossless image formats while editing (e.g., PNG) to avoid recompression artifacts.

License

Distributed under the GNU General Public License. See LICENSE for full terms.

Acknowledgements

• Built with Qt QML — thanks to the Qt Project and contributors.
• Example mermaid image by Shurajo & AVALANCHE Game Studio under CC BY 3.0 License. The example image is modified from the original, which can be found here.