TESSERA is a toy image editor that reconstructs your photos from geometric primitives.
Tessera takes a photo and rebuilds it piece by piece using geometric shapes: triangles, ellipses, hexagons, rectangles, squares, and circles. The result lands somewhere between abstract art and impressionist painting. It uses math, not AI, to reinterpret your images.
Also, it's free.
How it works
- Choose an image.
- Set your parameters: shape count, type, and weight, plus controls for quality and refinement.
- Watch Tessera reconstruct your image, one shape at a time.
- Re-roll the image, or export it as an JPG, PNG or SVG file.
Here, my wife -- then girlfriend -- becomes one with the wall:
Here's a source image, followed by reconstructions with progressively more shapes.
In your post-processing software, use layers and masks to blend your original photos and Tessera reconstructions into a single composition:
On privacy ...
Tessera is completely private. Images are processed on your device. Nothing is sent to a server. There is no AI, no data collection, no tracking of any kind.
Get Tessera
Tessera is free to use at https://tessera.slithy.me/. It's also a PWA; add it to your phone's home screen and use it offline.
Tessera is available to purchase as a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux. It adds two features not available in the browser: image folder browsing, and integration with Backlight to browse your online albums.
If you enjoy using Tessera and want to support its development (or its developer), please consider the purchase.
Royalty-free images from Unsplash
Tessera includes an Unsplash browser — search and browse millions of high-quality photos, explore curated collections, and run them directly in Tessera. Portraits, landscapes, architecture, texture, abstract — whatever catches your eye is one tap away from becoming raw material. Here are some creations from Unsplash images, using the square canvas export option:
Support
For feedback, questions, feature requests, issues, or to share, visit the new Tessera forum in the Community section.
Coda
Tessera is a bit of a toy, and I take delight in that. Deterministic math yields random results. Each roll of an image is a bit of a gamble, each combination of parameters the recipe for a surprise. I've found pleasure in abstracting images only for the joy of seeing them. I've enjoyed using Tessera to create wallpapers for my phone. And I am loving the square canvas with its geometric overflow!
I've got a few ideas for continued development, things I'd like to add or tweak or improve. And I've got some thoughts on things that might feed back from Tessera into Backlight.
Speaking of Backlight, this year marks its 10-year anniversary. I wanted to celebrate it by doing something fun, and Tessera is just that.
At a time when generative AI is seeping into everything, whether we want it or not, I take comfort being able to generate images without artificial intelligence.
Whatever you do with Tessera, I hope you enjoy it too.