Every color at the same height — not a lithophane, a mosaic

What it's for

• Film, band or game poster reduced to a few colors, to hang on the wall
• Stylized portrait of the pet or the family, made from a photo
• Team crest or flag, on a round plate
• Studio or workshop door sign, with the artwork in flat colors
• City skyline or map in a few colors, for the living room wall
• Album cover cut down to 4 colors, for the home office

What you adjust

• Rectangular or round plate, 60 to 300 mm, 1.6 to 6 mm thick, with corners left square or rounded up to a 20 mm radius
• Four or eight colors: in the editor you merge colors by dragging, set the color code (hex) of each filament, choose the background and erase the parts you don't want printed
• Inlay height between 0.4 and 1.2 mm — how far the color layer rises above the plate. It is the same step for every color, and the floor rises if your layer is thicker
• Optional frame, 1 to 10 mm wide and 0.4 to 4 mm tall, printed in its own filament
• Optional recess: the plate gets a pocket the size of the artwork, so the color pieces drop in aligned when you print them separately and glue them down
• Hanging hole, 3 to 10 mm across — and if the picture outgrows your bed, you can cut it in half and join the halves with glue-in pins

How to print it

• You get a 3MF — the file your slicer opens, be it Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer — with each color in a slot, meaning the filament position in the AMS; the slot order is the one you set in the panel. Without an AMS, you also get one STL per color in a .zip, one file per piece
• The colored face goes upward: the mosaic is flat, it rests on the whole plate and leaves nothing overhanging, so it asks for no supports
• The plate is the background — wherever you erased the image, its filament shows through; pick that color accordingly
• Thin artwork detail becomes a warning naming the color, measured against the nozzle width you entered — a warning is a reading, not a stop. The frame and the inlay height do stop before getting too thin, and the plate size stops at what your bed can hold

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an AMS to print the picture?

For every color in one print run, yes: the 3MF carries each color in a slot — the filament position in the AMS. Without an AMS, download one STL per color (.zip), print each piece in its filament and glue it onto the plate; with the recess on, they drop into the pocket aligned. Swapping filament mid-print doesn't help, because here the colors share one height instead of stacking.

How many colors can I use?

Four or eight — those are the two counts the editor offers. Eight reads a face or a sky better; four spends fewer filament swaps and prints faster. Either way you can still fold similar tones into one and erase what you don't want, so eight colors in the plan may end up as five actual pieces.

Can I use a photo?

You can, but the result is a poster of four or eight flat colors, not a photo: it isn't a lithophane and doesn't rely on backlight. Photos with a clean background and strong contrast work best, and in the editor you fold neighboring tones together and erase what's left over.

What's the maximum size?

300 mm per side or in diameter. If you declare your printer, the control stops earlier, at what that bed can hold — on the rectangle counting the piece turned sideways, and on the round one by the bed's short side, because turning a disc buys you nothing. For a bigger picture, turn on splitting: it comes out cut into two halves with pins, to glue afterwards.