Broadly, yes. If we print and ship a framed artwork to you, that will probably cost you more than if you use a printer near your home. It doesn't always follow, and bear in mind that your local printer might not be the obsessive perfectionist that ours is, but it's worth checking. Once you have the bitmap you could, of course, print as many as you like, and there's a copyright issue to consider there, but we will definitely discuss this option and you'll find us very accommodating.

In a perfect world, yes – but we can offer a transfer service if most of your precious memories are still on glossy paper. Contact us for details.

The more images you can provide, the better the finished mosaic will be. As an example, a one-metre-square mosaic broken into hexagonal cells measuring 25mm each will contain 1,840 cells. If you can furnish us with more than that, the software has more choices to find the perfect match for each cell.

If you can’t provide that many, there are tricks we can perform to increase your catalogue (see below). Bear in mind too that if all your pictures are of green fields and we're trying to create a mosaic of a pink face, something has to give!

We'll be more than happy to look at your chosen base image and catalogue of photographs and advise the best way forward - there are some cunning things we can do to enhance the results.

Our brains are very attuned to finding faces amongst abstract shapes, and that's part of the secret of the appeal of these mosaics. If the mosaic is of something else - your car, your dog, your house, your horse, your company logo (we've done them all) - the detail needs to be sharper, which means it's better to have more pictures with more variety of colour and shape.

Drop us a line to discuss your project - we're always happy to push the boundaries.

Most of our clients copy their images to DVD, SD card, or memory stick, and get them to us via the good ol’ postie. Do remember to make a complete back up of all your precious images. If you're at one with FTP and have the wherewithal to upload to our site that’s even better - contact us to find out how.

From the time we get your catalogue the normal process will be between 3-4 weeks for you to take delivery of your finished mosaic. Printing to photographic paper rather than canvas will take a few days off this time, while more specialised substrates might take longer.

We'll contact you to review the finished mosaic before it goes off for printing. This stage has been known to add a couple of weeks if everyone in the family gets involved!

Using digital techniques we can crop, divide and even recolour your original images. Another very successful option is to use our face detection software, which works particularly well for weddings and family gatherings where there are multiple faces in each shot and everyone's part of the celebration. The software adds in an extra zoomed crop for each individual face and that helps add more flesh colours into the mix.

Not at all! You can have your image made into a poster, a rolled canvas, a professionally stretched and ready to hang canvas, a cushion, a rollerblind, a sheet of aluminium, a blanket, a floating acrylic sheet, and even as ceramic tiles for your bathroom....... In fact the options are endless. We work with cutting edge digital printers in the UK so if you have an unusual request just ask - we love a challenge. If you followed The Big Picture project you'll know we created a mosaic on 288 large MDF boards. Giant banners for wall hangings? The world's biggest jigsaw? We've done it...!

There are two steps to the process - the first is us building the mosaic image, and the second is the printing element. Typically the bigger the final image, the more it will cost to print, and the more complex your requirement is, the more work's involved for us, and again the cost will rise.

Not helpful? Okay... in the most common case, where we're building a mosaic from digital pictures you supply and printing onto canvas, a typical cost for a metre-square stretched canvas is UK£500, currently about US$780 or €575.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some of our customers would prefer to retain their privacy. One's a very famous rock and roller, another's a household-name newspaper baron, another's in the super-league of professional footballers, but that's all we're allowed to say!

One large commission was for the P&O vessel Ventura, which was launched in April 2008 and has forty four mosaics adorning the stairwells over fourteen decks, depicting key cruise destinations and featuring tens of thousands of photos by the very talented Vanessa Ballard.

That said, most of our customers are people wanting to give family members or friends a very special gift, to celebrate a special occasion - a birthday, a wedding, retirement, and so on. A mosaic is a fabulous present - unique and very personal!