When my wife and I got married, we paid for everything in cash. Not in literal bank notes, but we didn’t run a high balance on credit cards or take out a personal loan. We cut back on the monthly expenses, took on some extra hours at work, and saved as much as possible for over a year to pay for everything. Other cost-cutting measures included keeping the guest count to less than 50 people, doing all the planning ourselves, and making all the decorations ourselves. Even after all that it was still expensive, but worth the effort. Personal bias aside, it was one of if not the most fun weddings I’ve ever attended. The guests carried on with lively conversations, people danced, and there was an open bar.

In the United States, attendees traditionally write something in a guest book and participate in some other memory-making activity for the newlyweds. We placed an Instax instant photo camera and several packets of instant film on the entryway table next to a framed engagement photo. Guests snapped candid photos and taped them in the guestbook with a message.

In this article I wanted to share a budget-friendly way to create lasting memories for you or a friend’s wedding using photo mosaics with Bouquet. Let’s get into it!

Previous Articles

Posted below are the articles related to Bouquet. Those titled Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial and Advanced Features of Bouquet are written in a tutorial style format. All the articles take less than 5 minutes to read. If you’re new to Bouquet as a platform and want to learn more about its features and how to use it, I highly recommend checking out those articles.

Introducing Bouquet: Creating Stunning Photo Mosaics

Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial

Advanced Features of Bouquet

Better Quality Mosaics with Bouquet

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

Guest Table Mosaics

Technology has made it easier than ever to take and share photos. That got me thinking… what if guests contributed to the wedding in a meaningful way by sharing photos of the bride and groom? Using their contributions to create the guest table, or other photos, gets people involved and excited. Memories are such a powerful emotional phenomenon. Each guest submitting their favorite photos of the bride, groom, or couple together, would be such a kind and thoughtful gesture. Of course, I don’t want to exclude other kinds of relationships. If the couple consists of two grooms, two brides, or something else entirely, the gesture still works.

The idealized version of the concept is to have anywhere from 1-3 high-resolution photo mosaics sitting at the guestbook entryway table. One photo of the bride, one of the groom, and one from the engagement photos seems like a good amount. Alternatively, one larger portrait of the couple from their engagement is another option. Friends and family members would upload their favorite photos of the wedding party to a platform like Google Drive before the event. Depending on the size of the respective families, it could result in hundreds of photo contributions, serving as unique piece images for creating the mosaics.

How to Share the Photos

Bouquet can source piece images for building mosaics manually from the device’s memory, from a photo album, Google Photos, or from a video. Bouquet’s ability to automatically crop piece images from short-form video adds another dynamic for guest contributions. In my testing for this article, I could not find a way to share access to albums with others using Google Photos. The simplest free solution was to use Google Drive. There are several screen-captures below illustrating how one might set up their sharing folders with friends and family.

If pursing the main decoration idea proposed in this article, sharing edit access to larger Bride’s Family and Groom’s Family folders for contributions is one method. I then broke down each side of the family into smaller subfolders for individualized photo sharing. Guests take photos constantly during these kinds of events. By providing additional access to other key wedding party members like the Father of the Bride, Mother of the Bride, Bridesmaids, or Groomsman, it creates a unique secondary opportunity for even more guest memories.

To facilitate the upload process, sending emails to the respective families with clearly labeled links translates to more photo contributions. After writing thank you letters, the different bridesmaids, groomsman, and others, could also receive a beautiful photo mosaic commemorating the event.

Conclusion

The focus of any wedding is, of course, the ceremony itself and marrying the couple. No one here is discounting that. However, the more guests can be involved and contribute, the more fun it is for everyone. With prices for wedding planners ranging anywhere from $2,000 – $5,000, venues ranging from $4,000 – $20,000+, and a professional photographer charging $2,000 – $5,000+, weddings get obscenely expensive in the blink of an eye.

Having a few back-pocket ideas that are both cheap and fun for guests seems like a win-win to me. Speaking personally, knowing my candid cell phone photos went on to a greater purpose would motivate me to take more. It may feel like an insignificant gesture in the moment, but ever year around our anniversary my wife and I break out the guestbook and reflect on all the great memories. Sometimes the small things in life really do matter.

As always, leave a comment below or send the author an email at michael@sola.inc for any feedback or idea for future articles. Catch you on the next one!  

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

The post Budget Wedding Memories with Bouquet appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

In our last article about Bouquet, we showed Portland, Oregon’s beautiful cherry blossoms at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. As the reader, you don’t necessarily have to live in Portland specifically to enjoy the cherry blossoms blooming. I’ve seen them all over neighborhoods in Portland, Vancouver, up in Seattle, everywhere. The climate in the Pacific Northwest lends itself well to cherry blossoms. It also lends itself well to Japanese maples, which especially during their infancy, require very little direct sunlight compared to other trees. That is my understanding, anyway. I’ve never been much of a gardener or arborist personally, so you may want to confirm my ‘facts’ about the Japanese maple. I digress.

To clarify: for the remainder of this article, when it says child images, the meaning is not its literal translation of images of children. In the context of creating a photo mosaic, a child image is one of several images used as individual pieces to generate the final parent image, or mosaic.

H3 Previous Articles

Posted below are the articles related to Bouquet. The articles titled Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial and Advanced Features of Bouquet are written in more of a tutorial style format. Both articles take less than 5 minutes to read. If you’re new to Bouquet as a platform and want to learn more about its features and how to use it, I highly recommend checking those articles out.

Introducing Bouquet: Creating Stunning Photo Mosaics

Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial

Advanced Features of Bouquet

Better Quality Mosaics with Bouquet

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

No Photos Woes

When creating mosaics with Bouquet, one issue that feels like a constant struggle is the lack of piece (child) images to choose from. I am generally not one to take a lot of photos. After capturing a beautiful moment and wanting to turn it into a mosaic, I find myself lacking in child images to use. One remedy is to use short videos that Bouquet will automatically convert into child images for the parent mosaic. That’s a great remedy except, what happens when the video you took is in landscape but the parent image in square or portrait?

Recalling the Previous Mosaic

In the article from a couple of days ago Bouquet and Portland’s Cherry Blossoms, I used a couple of different sources for the child images. Several child photos I pulled from my own camera roll. Others were clipped from a short video I took while at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park. See below for the gallery of unedited photos.

As I worked to get all the images added as pieces to the final mosaic, I noticed a problem. Images cropped from the video, since the video was taken in landscape format, were rotated 90 degrees to the left. All the photos clipped from the image were like this. Modifying them using the Trimming option felt like the easiest solution. See below.

Trimming Photos in Bouquet

Trimming photos in Bouquet is a simple enough process. Below there are three images in a gallery that go step-by-step on how to edit the piece images. If you pulled piece images from a landscape video clip like I did, your photos are likely rotated. Bouquet will automatically select any images pulled from a video-source.

By tapping Edit, marked by the star symbol, it will pull up several options. Many of these options were discussed in greater detail in previous articles such as Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial and Advanced Features of Bouquet. As mentioned in the introduction of this article, both of those articles take less than 5 minutes to read. I highly recommend checking them out if you’re unfamiliar with some of Bouquet’s more advanced features.

Tapping Trimming will then guide the user to a simple editing screen where the image can be rotated, cropped by dragging the corners, or reset. The Reset feature behaves exactly as expected and will return the image to its pre-edited state.

Once feature I particularly appreciate about Bouquet is that once the user taps OK, it will automatically proceed to the next-highlighted image for editing. That means every photo selected for editing can be quickly trimmed without reverting to the previous screen. It may not sound like a huge convenience now, but when editing 20 or 40+ images, having to return to the previous screen each time would be a pain.

Conclusion

The word that comes to mind when thinking about Bouquet’s editing features is convenience. The app developers really took great care when designing the overall layout, menus, and their features. The fact photos can be added manually, from a Google Photos account, or automatically clipped out from videos only adds to the convenience. The various color filters and image sliders to better highlight peoples’ faces, change the lighting, or make the child images more or less detailed are equally as convenient.

Bouquet is free to download and free when exporting smaller resolution mosaics. You never know what you might create.

Give it a try and be sure to tag us on Instagram @solaofamerica. We want to see all your unique creations. As always, leave a comment below or write the author directly at michael@sola.inc with any suggestions for future content or feedback. Thanks for reading!

H3 Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

The post Editing Piece Images for Bouquet appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

At the Tom McCall Waterfront Park there are what feels like nearly 100 cherry blossoms lining the walkway. Ushering in Spring, the cherry blossom, or simply Sakura (桜；さくら) in Japanese, has long been considered a symbol of life’s natural cycles.  The weather in the Pacific Northwest being somewhat temperamental, a spectacular blossom is not always guaranteed. In previous years, I would make plans to visit, then a snap of cold rain left the branches mostly baren by the time I reached the waterfront.

This year, the bloom was incredible. A bit of unusual sun and warmer weather provided an earlier bloom. My wife and I are always looking for something to do when the weather is nice. We took advantage and went this past Sunday to admire the sakura and I immediately knew I wanted to create some photo mosaics with Bouquet.

Previous Articles

Posted below are the articles related to Bouquet. The articles titled Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial and Advanced Features of Bouquet are written in more of a tutorial style format. Both articles take less than 5 minutes to read. If you’re new to Bouquet as a platform and want to learn more about its features and how to use it, I highly recommend checking those articles out.

Introducing Bouquet: Creating Stunning Photo Mosaics

Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial

Advanced Features of Bouquet

Better Quality Mosaics with Bouquet

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

History of Portland’s Cherry Blossoms

According to an article by the local news channel KGW8, part of NBC, the cherry blossoms were originally a gift from Japan. The gift was to commemorate the opening of the Japanese American Historical Plaza which opened in 1990. Designed by architect Robert Murase, the plaza honors the 120,000 (estimated) Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II. An estimated 4,000 of those sent to the camps were from Oregon. There are poems, sculptures, and of course, the cherry blossoms. All this in memory of those events and to raise public awareness of the diversity of cultural experiences in the United States.

If you live in the Portland area, other places to see the cherry blossoms are the Portland Japanese Garden, Hoyt Arboretum, Mt. Tabor, and Laurelhurst Park. For those who want to see cherry blossoms outside of Portland, there’s the Oregon State Capital State Park in Salem. For those curious, Oregon State Capital State Park is the actual name. Yes, capital is repeated in the title. Here’s the Google Maps listing for anyone who cares to fact-check the author.

Parent Image

Just like any other mosaic made with Bouquet, we must start with a parent image. While visiting the Tom McCall Waterfront Park, I snapped the photos seen in the gallery below. As mentioned in previous articles, I’m not the best photographer, but I try. That must count for something, right?

Since the plan is to try and produce at least one high-quality mosaic, I chose the first image in the gallery. Something about the juxtaposition between the highway bridge, orange safety cones, and cherry blossom all in a single frame makes for an interesting composition.

Repeated Images

If you look at the first couple of images in the second gallery below, you may notice what we talked about in the previous article Better Quality Mosaics with Bouquet. Since the child images used to produce this mosaic were taken from a short video, there are several repetitions. I purposefully zoomed in on the parent image from the Bouquet app to further illustrate. Look for several repetitions of the pedestrians standing on the boardwalk. Can you see them? So can I. This is a challenge you will have to overcome as the user if you want to produce better-quality mosaics. Capturing images with differing color schemes allows the app to more easily pair a child image with a particular section of a parent image.

Final Filters

In the absence of raw talent, you can always use filters like I do. After selecting several more images from my phone’s camera roll, I added them as child images and tapped “fit pieces” to regenerate the parent image. The day was sunny and then quickly turned overcast as a cloudburst hovered over the waterfront. Trying to match the mood, I selected Soft Light under the filters and then Cool. Fair warning, you do have to scroll down a bit under the filters to find Cool. I liked the result enough to share it with my wife and her family.

Conclusion

Based on my own personal preference, I find myself gravitating towards Bouquet filters like Plus Lighter, Soft Light, and Color Dodge. In my mind, the purpose of making a photo mosaic is to experiment with exaggerating the original. To satisfy my own artistic endeavors, limited they may be, I want the parent image to be an abstraction, not a perfect composition.

Bouquet is free to download and free when exporting smaller resolution mosaics. There is absolutely no risk in trying the app for yourself. You never know what you might create.

Give it a try and be sure to tag us on Instagram @solaofamerica. We want to see all your unique creations. As always, leave a comment below or write the author directly at michael@sola.inc with any suggestions for future content or feedback. Thanks for reading!

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

The post Bouquet and Portland’s Cherry Blossoms appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

On December 31, 2024, right before New Year’s Day, we posted an article called New Social Media Pages Coming Soon! In that article we talked about how Sola of America, Inc. the U.S. division of Sola K.K. (Japan), was in the process of creating profile on both Instagram and Facebook. Part of the reason for creating these pages is to have a platform to discuss new app releases and updates for the existing apps we offer. We also wanted a place to help spark interest in the apps we develop and services we offer, including offering discount codes for monoca 2, Bouquet, and accoca.

The United States is like Japan in that both countries love getting good deals. It’s still popular amongst many Japanese to receive circulars (weekly grocery ads) and do their shopping at different grocery stores to find the best prices on food. In the U.S. many retailers base their largest sales of the years around major Holidays. At Sola, we’re going to make announcements on our social media pages. If you follow us, you’ll be the first to know and take advantage!

Social Media Page Links

See below for some screenshots of content we’ve posted recently. Please leave a comment or email the author at michael@sola.inc for suggestions on future articles or content you all want to see on Sola’s social media pages.

Sola’s Facebook Page

Sola’s Instagram Profile

Sola’s Top 3 Apps in the U.S.

Before we discuss the new social media pages, I wanted to take a moment to briefly discuss Sola of America, Inc.’s top three apps in the U.S. One thing to note, all of Sola’s apps are free to download and to use. There are some functions of the apps that require a paid subscription. However, the term subscription, in fairness, is not the correct term to use in Sola’s case. Most of Sola’s apps have a one-time, lifetime purchase fee around $7.99. This is because at Sola’s core exists the Japanese philosophy of よろしくお願いします！Pronounced: yo-ro-she-koo-oh-neh-ga-ee-she-mah-su, it loosely translates to mutual care of one another.

“You take care of me, and I’ll take care of you.” Of course Sola needs income to provide for its employees, but they are a company genuinely interested in developing apps that make users’ lives easier and more convenient.

monoca 2

monoca 2 is a collection building app, that uses your Google or Apple login for syncing any collections you build. I am so tempted to define a collection as a collection of physical or digital items. Technically speaking, you cannot define a word by using the word itself.  In that sense, it’s easiest to think of a collection in monoca 2 as a group of similar items or items used for a similar purpose. In previous articles we discussed using monoca 2 to track Camping Equipment, for building a Vinyl Record Collection, for categorizing Cooking Recipes, and even Collecting and Rating Coffee. The beauty of the app is that you can customize each collection to your exact specifications. Each collection is made up of different subcategories, and each subcategory contains different fields. See below on links on where to download.

Bouquet

Bouquet is a photo mosaic app that allows the user to select a main parent image, and virtually any number of piece images. The piece images will then arrange themselves automatically to reform the parent image, based on the mosaic parameters set within the app. If the user wants larger piece images, the total number of squares can be reduced. Conversely, if the user wants greater detail in the parent image and less distinction in the piece images, selecting a larger number of squares will accomplish this. Check out some of our previous articles Photo Mosaic Tutorial, Advanced Features of Bouquet, and Export High Resolution Mosaics.

accoca

One of Sola’s lesser-known, but arguably more important apps is accoca. Pronounced ah-koh-kah, the app is a locally stored password vault. Password vaults securely house sensitive items like usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, PINs, anything you can think of. The primary difference between accoca and other password vaults on the market is that with accoca, there is the option to only store locally on your device. That means reduced risk of data loss, or stolen data, with your sensitive information stored on servers. Of course, this means if your device is damaged, that information could also be lost. To resolve this issue, Sola provides a way, in-app, to create a backup on the user’s Google Drive. However, this feature is completely optional.

Be sure to check out our 3-part deep dive on What is a Password Vault, followed by How to Generate Strong Passwords, and wrapping up with Using Stored Passwords with accoca.

We Want to Hear from You!!

Posted after the introduction section of this article are links to our new Facebook and Instagram pages. When we say we “want to hear from you”, we really mean it. In a world where it seems like companies, especially software companies, don’t listen or take feedback seriously from their userbase, Sola wants to be different. Of course Sola’s creative development team and software engineering teams do their best to design apps that will be beneficial to its userbase, but there’s nothing like the collective feedback of hundreds or thousands of users, pushing Sola to offer the features that will positively impact their lives.

We invite you to leave a comment below on any of these blog-style articles, contact the author directly at michael@sola.inc, or contact Sola’s development team directly at contact@sola.inc. This is your opportunity to have your voice heard and potentially even be featured in an upcoming article. If you’re reading this, thank you for continuing to support Sola’s efforts. We sincerely appreciate your interest and look forward to working together!

Where to Download

monoca 2

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1506544220

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sola_air.monoca

Web(Beta): https://monoca2.web.app/

Bouquet

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

accoca

Password Manager accoca: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/password-manager-accoca/id6503129390

The post We Want to Hear from You – Instagram & Facebook Pages are Live! appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

Today we’re taking our typical Bouquet article style in a totally different direction. In the past, we’ve focused our Bouquet photo mosaic content mostly on creating family memories. Using photos from birthdays, vacations, and special events, it’s possible to quickly and easily turn those moments into stunning photo mosaics with only a few taps or clicks. It’s understood family memories will be the primary use of Bouquet for many readers.

I generated and shared several photo mosaics with family while on vacation in December, during Christmas, and at New Year’s. I even got my in-laws, who are in their late 60s, to start using Bouquet. Please believe me when I say my in-laws are not technologically inclined people. If they were able to figure out Bouquet with only a little bit of coaching, I have complete confidence in you, the reader, to quickly master the app in about 5 minutes.

This article, I wanted to explore using Bouquet for creating unique thumbnails for both streamers and vTubers. Streaming, vlogging, and other digital careers have been on the rise for over a decade now. If you’d told me twenty years ago there would be eSports ‘athletes’ bringing in millions of dollars a year to play computer games professionally, it would have been a tough sell. Even if you’re not in the professional scene or dedicated to streaming full time, many engage in streaming and vTubing as a hobby on platforms like YouTube and Twitch. Bouquet can be a great way to switch things up and deliver fresh content to viewers. Let’s get into it.

Previous Articles

Posted below are the articles related to Bouquet. The articles titled Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial and Advanced Features of Bouquet are written in more of a tutorial style format. Both articles take less than 5 minutes to read. If you’re new to Bouquet as a platform and want to learn more about its features and how to use it, I highly recommend checking those articles out.

Introducing Bouquet: Creating Stunning Photo Mosaics

Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial

Advanced Features of Bouquet

Storing and Starting a New Mosaic

Purchase and Export High Resolution Mosaics

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

Content Woes

An issue I seem to read about regularly from individuals who engage in digital careers, specifically YouTube and Twitch, is the need to consistently create fresh content. I’ve both watched and read several analyses of businesses on social media to try and better understand what marketing for a modern, digital audience looks like. Repetition seems to be an interest killer for a lot of folks. Let’s assume you’re a vTuber or Streamer and every time you stream, the thumbnail is a screen-capture from the latest stream, some text, and that’s it. You’re probably going to start dropping viewers little by little because people get bored of seeing the same recycled content.

Having a few different methods for creating thumbnails and other images for social media can help to prevent this. If there’s a truly spectacular moment during a streaming session, outright capturing that shot may be sufficient. Viewers familiar with the scene should recognize the intense moment and that’s enough. If you’re a vTuber, using your avatar with a funny chat message could be another sufficient interest generator.

vTube Studio and Bouquet

If you’re looking for additional inspiration, Bouquet can also help with content creation. Before writing this article, I’d never attempted to use a digital avatar before. Deciding it would be less awkward to explain to my wife, I elected to use a cat avatar instead of masquerading as an anime girl. But you do you.

To create the avatar I used vTube Studio, by DenchiSoft. You can visit their main website by clicking HERE. There are a couple of guides on GitHub you can check out. One is a General Tutorial and another is a Beginner’s Guide on getting started with the platform and loading your own 2D models. From the reading on DenchiSoft’s website, the software is free for personal use, but business or commercial applications require prior approval. Please be respectful and reach out first if planning on using the software for commercial purposes.

After snapping a few screen-captures as a cat, I loaded them into Bouquet and then applied a couple of filters to keep the images fresh. This is what I was speaking to earlier in the article. Capturing a humorous moment in the stream while gaming, a viewer’s chat message, or even using an avatar as a change of pace if you regularly show your face can be great ways to change things up. At the end of the day, it’s all about maintaining interest in the content you’re posting.

Since Bouquet allows high-resolution exports for smaller images, why not try it out and use the mosaics for thumbnails on YouTube, Twitch, or another platform? Purchasing one of Bouquet’s high-resolution tickets could even be a cost-effective way to create channel giveaways. Printing out a few photo mosaic copies, signing them, then mailing them to the winners would only cost you a few dollars and leave fans with a great keepsake and an interesting story.

Conclusion

Just like any photo application, Bouquet is a tool in the tool bag. I’m not trying to minimize the usefulness of Bouquet, but it’s understood not all your photos will end up as mosaics. That wouldn’t make much sense. To that end, some of them will, and should become mosaics. If you’re a streamer or content creator, having another option, especially a cost-effective one, for generating unique images and keeping viewers interested is essential. I’ve heard several streamers over the years express frustration at the ebb and flow of relevance. You’re on top until you’re not.

Do yourself a favor and try out Bouqet. If you don’t like it, guess what? It can be uninstalled as easily as it was installed. However, something tells me that won’t be the case. As always, if there are any specific topics or article content you all want to see, leave a comment below or write to the author directly as michael@sola.inc.

Thanks for reading and we’ll catch you on the next one!

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

The post vTuber and Bouquet appeared first on Sola of America, Inc..

monoca 2

Sola of America’s three most popular apps are monoca 2, Bouquet, and accoca. Monoca 2 is a fully customizable, organization app capable of logging and categorizing both physical and digital objects. In previous articles, we discussed using monoca 2 for tracking camping equipment, managing a vinyl record collection, and even for building a recipe collection.

monoca 2 Case Study: Camping Equipment

monoca 2 Case Study: Vinyl Record

monoca 2 for Cooking Recipes

Bouquet

For Bouquet, we showcased how to load a previous project (mosaic), start a new workspace, and edit the mosaic tiles (photo pieces). Then, we demonstrated how to use the myriad effects, filters, and image sliders to further tailor any mosaic to your unique style. Finally, we explored purchasing a ticket to export high-resolution mosaics.

Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial

Advanced Features of Bouquet

Storing and Starting a New Mosaic

Purchase and Export High Resolution Mosaics

accoca

In a world where more and more of society’s interactions and transactions occur online, keeping sensitive information like passwords and personally identifying information away from bad actors (hackers) is critical. Take five or ten minutes to browse through your old emails and consider the kind of information in your own digital footprint.

Speaking personally, I think the fallout from a simple email hack would be devastating. Years of communications, purchase receipts, and financial documents like bank statements, would potentially be exposed. With many companies pushing for ‘paperless’ billing and statements, the volume of sensitive information stored in email servers is only going to grow. 

With accoca, a localized password vault, the user can safely and securely store their usernames, passwords, credit cards, and other sensitive data on their mobile device. For a small fee, the fully unlocked version of accoca can even use OCR to read text, and auto-generate complex, difficult to hack passwords that are a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols.

Remember, the most secure online experience comes from having non-repeated, complex passwords for each account. In that way, should one account become compromised, the others will remain unaffected.

Upcoming Announcements

New Social Media Platforms

While Sola K.K. is already popular in Japan, Sola of America, Inc., the U.S. division, is just getting started. As a part of our ongoing efforts to bring our user base the best possible apps and experiences, we’re in the process of launching new Instagram and Facebook accounts. In addition to email, you’ll be able to receive regular updates from the company and interact with us on a more personal level.

As a smaller technology company, Sola genuinely cares about and wants to hear your feedback. Is there a bug we overlooked in the app, a feature you really appreciate, or a new feature you’d like to see added? Tell us about it! From your interactions with us, we can further refine Sola’s software offerings to better suit your needs as the user. We’re constantly looking for ways to improve them ourselves, but nothing beats real feedback from the community.

Instagram

Up until this point, demonstrations and explanations on how to use monoca 2, Bouquet, and accoca were done via blog-style articles on the Sola.inc website. While the written word is great for instruction, live video tutorials can showcase an app’s usage real-time. In the coming months, expect additional content on social media, including notifications when new articles are published.

We’re also planning on doing limited giveaways for discounts on purchasing the unlocked version of the software, or in some instances, completely free. Be sure and subscribe to be the first to know about where to find the promo codes.  

Facebook

While Instagram is better suited for short-form video format, Facebook excels at static posts. As we work to build our Facebook page, be sure and follow us for company updates, discount codes, and contests.

More than the software itself, we want to build a community of enthusiasts who appreciate the utility and convenience Sola’s apps. If there is an update, we’ll tell you about it and what’s included. New blog articles will also be posted there in short form with links to the Sola website.

Please like and share the page with your friends. As all the software is free to use, we’re trying to grow our community and provide the best possible experience for everyone.

Where to Download

monoca 2: App Store & Google Play Store

Bouquet: App Store

accoca: App Store

Sola Website: https://sola.inc

Next Article: Closet (Clothing) Management

While not as popular a movement in the United States as compared to Japan, minimalism does have a following. In its traditional form, minimalists will establish a limit to the total number of possessions they can own. Many in Japan take this limit to the extreme by counting all their possessions—a task traditional Americans may balk at. However, over-buying of clothing is an issue many can relate to. Just look on Facebook Marketplace at all the listing saying, “Selling because I have too many [insert clothing type here].”

In our next article, we’ll look at placing a limit on the clothing items in one’s closet as a mental exercise in decluttering.

Thank you for reading! As always, comment below or write the author at michael@sola.inc for any feedback, suggestions on future articles, or compliments!

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In the process of writing these articles, I’ve come to genuinely appreciate the ease with which one can create photo mosaics with Bouquet. Many of Sola’s past articles go into greater detail how to create a photo mosaic, use Bouquet’s advanced editing features, as well as store and restore previous projects.

Previous articles are linked below. Each article only takes five or less minutes to read. If there is any confusion on how to properly use the Bouquet app, check them out and see for yourself how easy it is to navigate and create your own personal, customized mosaics.

This article will focus on using the high-resolution export function, which is the paid option for this app. Creating the mosaics is free and so is exporting the thumbnail, Letter, Photo2, Photo1, and Square sizes. Exporting sizes A2, A3, A4, B2, and B3 costs $11.99 for an export ticket, and is valid for 30 days from the day of purchase. Since Sola K.K. is originally a Japan-based company, they use the metric system of measurement in the app, but U.S. standard inch measurements are listed below for your convenience. It is recommended to choose a slightly larger export size and then scale down the image for printing at a photo print shop.

Conversion Chart

• A2 (420mm x 592mm): 16.5” x 23.4”
• A3 297mm x 420mm: 11.7” x 16.5”
• A4 210mm x 297mm: 8.25” x 11.7”
• B2 515mm x 728mm: 20.25” x 28.65”
• Letter 100mm x 148mm: 4” x 5.8”
• Photo2 127mm x 178mm: 5” x 7”
• Photo1 89mm x 127mm: 3.5” x 5”
• Square 210mm x 210mm: 8.25” x 8.25”

Article Links and Where to Download

Previous Articles

Introducing Bouquet: Creating Stunning Photo Mosaics

Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial

Advanced Features of Bouquet

Storing and Starting a New Mosaic

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store:https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website:https://bouquet.sola.inc/

Creating your Mosaic

Since we’ve already covered how to create mosaics in previous articles, I will not go into specific details in this article. Sample mosaic settings:

• Frame Size: B2
• Frame Direction: Portrait
• Number of Squares: 1,440

A total of 16 images were used, including 8 selected from the mobile device’s camera roll and then 8 additional extracted images from two 1-minute-long videos. When selecting add images from the app, the bottom-most option for video extraction accomplishes this. Once set, tapping Fit Pieces made the parent image as shown. Under the Effects tab at the top, the Soft Light effect made the surrounding tree colors really pop. The result gives the parent image an impressionist painting effect, except with photos. Very cool!

Exporting in High Resolution

After the mosaic is complete, it’s time to export in high resolution. Using the app’s top ribbon, tap 4. Export, and it will lead you to a screen where directly below the image, the pixel size is listed. In this case, it’s 7,096 x 10,030 pixels. This feature is useful if you’re using a graphic design app or website, such as Adobe Illustrator or Canva. Sola of America, Inc. is not affiliated in any way with Adobe or Canva. Nonetheless, they are popular options in the United States.

Tapping the Save button will prompt the user to purchase an export token for $11.99. As Bouquet is currently only available for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS, the app will use the payment information stored within the user’s Apple ID. Successful purchase will redirect the user back to the screen below showing the export token has been purchased successfully.

Multiple uses of an Export Ticket

It’s important to mention the export token will work for multiple projects. The Home Screen for the Bouquet app, which can be accessed at any time by tapping Top in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, allows the user to create and load multiple projects, known as Workspaces. With a previous project is loaded or a new workspace created, the Memory function then allows saving up to three variations of the same mosaic. All mosaic data such as: frame size, orientation, number of squares, pieces, and any additional effects like alpha and filters are retained.

Any of these projects, with a purchased ticket, can be exported in high resolution for the next 30 days. With the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays having recently passed and New Year’s fast approaching, there is ample time to turn one’s recent family gatherings and celebrations into frame-worthy memories with Bouquet!

Decorating your Home or Office

It’s common in the United States and across the globe to have one or multiple dedicated spaces in the home for pictures of friends, family, and pets. Some use a wall in the living room, hallway, or a console table. I think IKEA offers some decent photo frames for purchase at reasonable prices. You can order online or head to the nearest store location and pick out a few frames that match the Bouquet export sizes.

Keep in mind the mosaic image quality when printing. So long as the printed image size is the same or smaller than the high-resolution export from Bouquet, there should be no degradation. Blowing up an image to a much larger size for printing may reduce the final image quality. With many photo printing shops offering reasonable prices, try printing different sizes of the same mosaic and find what works best for you!

Feedback

As always, Sola wants to hear from you, our readers and users. Be sure and comment below or send the author any feedback at michael@sola.inc. We are in the process of getting dedicated social media pages for our U.S. users and encourage you to share your own unique mosaics with us. Please include any social media handles you’d like us to include on your post for proper credit.

Thank you for reading and if you’re seeing this before January 1^st of 2025, all of us as Sola want to wish you a Happy New Year!

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store:https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website:https://bouquet.sola.inc/

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In our previous article, ‘Advanced Features of Bouquet’, we demonstrated some of the more advanced image editing features. Using the Primary Effect Filters and Image Alpha slider, there are nearly unlimited combinations of personalized photo mosaics just a tap away. Re-opening the app after closing saves your progress, but what happens when you want to move on to another project?

Here we’ll be covering how to save a mosaic to one of Bouquet’s three memory slots, remove the previously selected piece images, and select a new parent image. We’ll also show how to save a thumbnail version and high resolution version of your mosaic to share with friend, family, or post on social media. Let’s get into it!

Previous Articles

Introducing Bouquet: Creating Stunning Photo Mosaics

Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial

Advanced Features of Bouquet

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store:https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website:https://bouquet.sola.inc/

Starting over from an Existing Mosaic

Upon first opening the Bouquet app, you’ll always be greeted by the left-hand screen capture. If you’ve been following along with our Bouquet guides, then tapping or clicking ‘Free mode’ will start a new mosaic if you’ve never created one or take you back to your current project—complete with the parent image and selected pieces.

If you have previously created a mosaic and want to start an entirely new one, tap ‘Workspace’ in the upper-right corner, then ‘New Workspace’. See the screenshot (center) below for reference. Saved mosaics can be accessed by tapping ‘Workspace List’. This will take you to the below-right screen capture where you can access any of the three project memory slots.

Storing, Restoring, and Deleting Projects

Storing and restoring saved projects is straightforward in Bouquet. If you already have a mosaic loaded, tap the ‘Options’ button in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Here you’ll be presented with a prompt box with Memory Function, Reset Effect, Animation, Delete, and Settings. Tap ‘Memory Function’, then ‘Store’, and choose one of the three memory slots to save your current mosaic project. As you can see from the right-most screen capture, I’ve already chosen to save the project the guide article Lia as a Puppy.

IMPORTANT: If you select Delete from the Options menu, your current mosaic, even if it’s saved under one of the memory functions, will be permanently deleted.

Building a New Mosaic

For demonstration purposes, I cleared Bouquet’s memory to show the process start to finish of how to produce a mosaic. If there are no other pre-loaded projects, tapping ‘Free Mode’ will immediately prompt to select the desired size and then the parent image. The parent image, as mentioned before, is the primary image the software will recreate using the individual mosaic pieces (photos). From there, you’ll be prompted to make any adjustments to the photo like rotating or trimming (cropping). 

Once back at the main screen, you’ll see ‘Add Pieces’ in pink, instead of ‘Fit Pieces’ only. Adding pieces will then allow the user to either select their photos manually, add from a photo album, Google Photos, or they’ll be clipped from a video.

TIP: We recommend keeping the length of the selected video length to less than one minute long for optimal app performance. More on this can be found by reading our first article Introducing Bouquet.

Cutting and Filters

Two advanced customization settings we did not discuss in the previous article, Advanced Features of Bouquet, are Cutting and Filters. Cutting will use Bouquet’s built in object-detection to modify which areas of the parent photo are generated mosaic-style and which are left alone.

For the photos seen in the gallery below, I left the Cutting setting on ‘8’. This is so my wife and I, as the photo subjects, are left untouched, but the background still forms a mosaic. Then I changed the Alpha Image slider to ~70% and played around the with various filters. My final samples in the gallery below use the filter settings Normal (no filter), Instant, and Sepia.

Settings Screen

At any point, tapping Options then Settings will take you to the settings screen. From there you can purchase a ticket through the Purchase Export Ticket button to export your mosaics in the larger A2, A3, A4, B2, or B3 sizes. Export tickets are valid for 30 days and are perfect if you’re trying to change the décor in your home or apartment.

My wife has a wall in the living room dedicated to photos of us as a couple and family. She’s constantly changing to give the house a refreshed feel. Many pharmacy & drug store chains have reasonable photo printing costs, such as Walgreens or CVS. Inquire on their respective websites to learn more.

Next article we’ll talk about some exciting new ways on the horizon you interact with us. As always, we want to hear from you! Sola of America, Inc. is a boutique mobile app-design firm. As a smaller company, we’re able to interact with and respond more directly with users and want to know how we can improve. Please send any feedback to michael@sola.inc or leave a comment below.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Where to Download

The app is free to download. Use the links below. Try it today!

App Store:https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website:https://bouquet.sola.inc/

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This is the third installment showcasing the photo mosaic app—Bouquet. Bouquet is a simple to use software that can quickly turn any group of photos into a unique and personalized mosaic. In less than one minute, the user can go from grabbing a handful of images from their camera roll or Google Photos account to creating frame-worthy photos perfect for sharing with friends, family, or to social media accounts.

In this article, we’ll be reviewing some of Bouquet’s more advanced features to fully customize your mosaic. Afterwards, you can use the same techniques seen here on your own images. For the examples, we will be using the Photo2: 5” x 7” size, listed as 127mm x 178mm within the app. Remember: for now the app is only available in the App Store for iPhone and Mac users.

Previous Articles

Introducing Bouquet: Creating Stunning Photo Mosaics

Bouquet: Photo Mosaic Tutorial

Where to Download

The Bouquet app is free to download. Use the links below.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website:https://bouquet.sola.inc/

Initial Three Screens

When creating a mosaic, the three settings that will most affect the final image itself are the Frame size, Frame Direction, and Number of Squares. Frame size refers to the physical measurement of the image. Frame direction can be either portrait or landscape. Number of squares changes how many total times the selected images are used to produce the final parent image.

See below for a visual a reference on what the ‘Home Screen’, ‘Frame Screen’, and ‘1. Image’ screens look like.

Number of Photo (N) Differences

As we discussed above and in the Bouquet Picture Sample article, the ‘N’ setting changes the total number of times the ‘pieces’ images are used to produce the parent image. This is important because depending on the desired outcome, a smaller or larger N number is chosen. The fewer squares (N) selected, the more detail is visible on the mosaic pieces themselves. Selecting a higher square (N) count will produce mosaics with a sharper parent image, but reduced detail on piece images.

Below are three examples. The left-hand image used 204 squares. The center image used 816 squares, which strikes a nice balance between the parent image clarity and piece detail. The right-hand image shows a whopping 1,440 image count, where the parent image detail is much sharper. As the user, it may be better to choose a higher N count if the ‘piece’ photos themselves are not particularly clear or well-framed photos.

I mentioned in a previous article that I’m a far less talented photographer (using a phone or with a proper camera) than my wife. As such, I prefer to use a higher N value to hide my amateur photography skills.

Customize: Primary Effects and Alpha

Primary Effects

At this point, we’ve covered the Frame, 1. Image, and 2. Piece settings extensively. Now let’s move on to 3. Effect. Right below the parent image mosaic, there are several primary effect filters: Normal, Plus Lighter, Soft Light, Hard Light, Screen, Overlay, Lighten, Darken, Multiply, Luminosity, Color Dodge, Color Burn, Difference, and Exclusion. Experimenting with these fourteen different primary effects is as simple as clicking or tapping. Don’t be shy! The sample photo above is of my wife and I’s dog, Lia, when she was a puppy. I chose the Soft Light effect that enhances any sunlight captured, blending the image’s fringe details.

Below are three sample mosaics with different effects so you can more easily visually reference the differences. Normal is the unfiltered version. Plus Lighter, in my opinion, gives more of a rustic look and feel, while Soft Light ramps up the cuteness factor—exactly what I wanted for a puppy photo.

Alpha

The alpha setting adjusts how pronounced the parent image is compared to the individual pieces. The default setting is 10%. Personally, I really appreciate it when software companies make it simple to revert back to default settings. Sometimes I mess up my settings accidentally and it can be frustrating resorting to web searches on how to ‘fix’ everything.

On the iPhone version of Bouquet, used in this article, the slider bar below the primary effects options adjusts the alpha. Tapping Image, Face, or Cutting buttons on the lower-right of the screen will revert each to their default. There is a nice visual representation as well, which I appreciate—if a slider is moved from its default position, the percentage turns from gray to blue. Fantastic! Below, the difference between 25%, 50%, and 75% image alpha is shown. The higher the image alpha percentage, the mosaic pieces become less pronounced and the parent image has a sharper resolution. 

Conclusion

The beauty of Bouquet as an application is its simplicity and ease of use. Personally, I am neither skilled at taking photos nor at editing them. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve failed miserably when my wife asked me to take photos of us out and about town or on vacation. Sure, I’ve gotten better over the years, but it’s nice when a program like Bouquet can do all the heavy lifting. Customizing your creations is only a tap or slider bar away.

Playing around in the Bouquet app I’m reminded of electronic music artists building tracks in the studio. Is there a certain expertise they use in morphing sounds for a unique hook, melody or bassline? Absolutely, but just as often you’ll see them turning randomly adjusting knobs in different plugins, then all the sudden—whoa! The perfect sound emerges.

It’s the same with Bouquet. There’s no right or wrong way to use the app. Play around with the settings and please be sure to tell us about your awesome creations by commenting below, emailing the author at michael@sola.inc, or tagging us when posting on social media with #PhotoMosaic and #BouquetApp. 

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The Holiday Season is just around the corner! Thanksgiving, Christmas, also Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Rohatsu, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, so many different reasons to gather with friends and family to relax, cook, eat, and of course, take photos and make lasting memories. In our first article from September of this year, we introduced readers to Bouquet, a simple to use software that can quickly and easily create stunning mosaics from your mobile device or Apple computer. The link to the original article can be found HERE.

In this article, we’ll be going through the simple steps required to produce an image like the one you see below. The picture is of the author’s golden retriever, Lia, when she was a puppy. Bouquet is the perfect companion for taking photos of pets, friends, family, vacations, or any time, then turning them into a unique and personalized photo mosaic to share.

Where to Download

The app is free to download, and can be found using the following links.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

Free Photo Export Sizes

The following photo mosaic sizes can be exported for free directly from the app in high definition.

Postcard: 3.9” × 5.8”

Photo2: 5” × 7”

Photo: 3.5” × 5”

Square: 8.3” × 8.3”

In the sample photo above, the author used size: Photo2 (L2) with image generator set to 816 photo uses. This means of the 28 selected photos to generate the mosaic, they were copied and arranged a total of 816 times to create the final image. The image count (N) can also be customized. Fewer pieces will result in a lower picture resolution but provide clearer detail in the individual photos used to create the mosaic. Higher image count (N) will produce a sharper final mosaic. Try it for yourself!

Creating your first Mosaic

After first opening the application, you’ll be greeted with the screen seen below (left). Click the center button Free Mode to begin. Next, if you’re trying to match the image size in this article, tap or click Frame outlined with a red square in the screen capture below (right). My app is set to size: Photo2 (P), and N = 816. As explained briefly above, Photo2 means a 5” x 7” image. Keep in mind the app shows measurements in mm, which is more precise, but not the ‘Standard’ measurement system used in the United States. N is the number of tiles, or pieces, that will be used from the photos selected to create the mosaic.

Next to the Frame button (top-left of app screen), tap 1. Image to select the desired main mosaic image. This is the image that will be turned into a mosaic using the selected individual pieces (photos). After selecting the photos that will be used to create the mosaic, you can always tap a photo displayed in the row, then tap Mark with the star icon, and choose any individual preference from the menu for that specific photo. For example, you can instruct Bouquet to mark photos as a once, twice, or three times favorite (1x, 2x, or 3x), ensuring that photo is used more or less frequently. Note: the default setting for selected images is a 1x favorite. Photos can also be labeled Mark as Ignore to remove it from the mosaic.

Adding, Highlighting, and Deleting Mosaic Pieces

 As shown above, once the desired photos (pieces) are selected, you can customize the mosaic as you see fit. The software will automatically detect the primary colors for photos and arrange them to make the mosaic look the cleanest. Tapping a photo will show its position(s) in the mosaic with blue boxes. It can then be removed or replaced with other photos to the user’s preference.

With the selected photo, tapping Mark, and then Mark as Ignore will only cause the software to stop including that single photo in the final mosaic after tapping Fit Pieces—the largest button in the app’s interface. Selecting and then tapping Remove with the trashcan icon will remove the piece from the mosaic entirely and cannot be used again without tapping the Add button and re-incorporating the image into the pieces gallery.

Adding Pieces

Methods for Adding

Pieces can be added using four distinct methods.

1. Manually
2. Add from a photo album
3. Add from Google Photos
4. Select Video

When creating the sample mosaic of my wife and I’s golden retriever from when she was a puppy, I selected all the photos used manually. Look below at the photo strip and notice how poor of a photographer I am (my wife is much more talented at taking pictures than me). Even though the individual photos of my dog are amateur, at best, the final mosaic still came out stunning. Don’t let our dog’s face fool you. She gets walked every day, eats expensive dog food, and regularly sees the vet to remain healthy. She just likes to act sad.

Holiday Photo Ideas

A trick for this upcoming Holiday Season will be to save photos to specific folders. Using this method, you can create multiple mosaics of individual friends or family members by selecting different ‘main images’, but use the same folder of multiple photos to construct each unique image. For example, you can take 15 or 20 photos of Thanksgiving dinner, then individual portrait-style photos of your family to create individual mosaics for each person.

Alternatively, if you are a photo enthusiast, try creating individual folders of each family member and then creating a mosaic from photos of just that one person. Remember, if using the one of the free sizes: Postcard, Photo, Photo2, or Square, the images can be exported in high resolution.

Try it for free! Be sure and tag us with #PhotoMosaic or #BouquetApp when sharing on social media. We would love to see your unique and creative works!

Be sure to leave a comment below with any questions or additional feedback.

Download Links

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1494245634

Official Website: https://bouquet.sola.inc/

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