Help with automating colour picking

[Benzy]

Hey everyone, 

I am creating some stylised pixel art based on some photos I have taken. My current process is I create a grid of squares (each an individual shape) and then overlap my photo. I then select each square from the layers tab and use the colour picker to select from the underlying image.

This is very time consuming as you can imagine! I'm wondering if there is a faster/smarter way to do this? I'm currently doing 25 x 25 square images, but want to go bigger. However, bigger means much more time and probably a repetitive strain injury, so looking for alternative solutions.

Thanks

[Ray S.]

The fast way to pick a color when using e.g. the brush-tool is to press the alt-key. This turn the cursor to a magnifying glass to choose from what pixel you want to pick the color. The color-picker-tool on the ohter hand let you choose an aera f(1x1, 3x3, 5x5 and so on) to give you an averaged tone to pick. 

[Benzy]

Thanks Ray, however not quite what I am after. To try and explain it a different way:

 

Imagine you have 4 squares and an image underneath. If you made the squares transparent, you would just see the image colours. I want each square to "inherit" the colour of the image underneath the square. Is there a way to select multiple squares and say "make your fill the colour of the image underneath you (maybe based on the pixel underneath your centre pixel)"

I suspect this is something that would need an automation/macro of some kind? Wondering if Affinity designer can do it?

 

Thanks

[Pšenda]

I would try the following procedure - reduce the image, and then enlarge it again to its original size.

For example:

- image has 1600x800 px, and I need four color rectangle,

- reduce image size to 2x2 px. When reducing the new size depending on the method used (in this case, the neighbors would probably be most suitable), the content of the pixels will be recalculated, and thus the new color will be calculated.

- expand image size to original size. Colored squares/areas should appear that match the color of the reduced 2x2 pixels.

Normally a Mosaic filter should be used for this, but as far as I know it doesn't have this.