A mosaic is a group of images that you view as a single image. Each of the images that make up a mosaic is called a tile. There are two types of mosaics, flat mosaics and composite mosaics.
A flat mosaic is an image created from multiple input images. Flat mosaics are the most common type of mosaics. They do not preserve information about each input image and require compressing all the input images again. Flat mosaics can be created in the MrSID, JPEG 2000, and NITF formats. Creating a flat mosaic decrements the data cartridge. For more information, see Data Cartridges.
To create a flat mosaic, see Creating a Mosaic.
A composite mosaic is a MrSID image that contains other MrSID images. Composite mosaics are a special type of mosaic that can only be created in the MrSID Generation 3 and MrSID Generation 4 formats. They can be created quickly because they do not need to be compressed again, but they may load more slowly than flat mosaics. Creating a composite mosaic is also known as updating a mosaic, and it does not decrement from the data cartridge. An MG4 composite can only contain MG4 files. An MG3 composite can contain MG3 and MG2 files. MG4 composites can contain tiles of differing resolutions. MG3 composite mosaics do not support tiles with different resolutions. MG3 composites can be updated with tiles of a different resolution but must subsequently be flattened.
To create a composite mosaic, see Creating a Composite (MrSID) Mosaic.