Mandalas from images of lottery tickets

I'm going to make a thread showing how to make a mandala-type image in GIMP starting from a low-res image of a lottery ticket, such as this one

which I got from Stat$talker's post https://www.lotterypost.com/thread/327102/6768218

I think this falls under "math" because...reasons.

So first, get a low-resolution image of a lottery ticket, the worse the quality the better. Go to Colors -> Hue and Saturation and wiggle the knobs to make the colors brighter and prettier.

Next, go to Filters -> Map -> Panorama Projection, and slide the Zoom all the way down to either 0 or 1.0. Wiggle the knobs on Pan, Tilt, and Spin until you get something you like. I settled on this one

Next, scale the image into a really big square, and don't worry about how ugly and pixelated it is. I usually do 3000px by 3000px.

After you do that, go to Filters -> Artistic -> Oilify, and set the Mask Radius to a much bigger number than the default, maybe something in the range of 25-30. Click OK to make the magic happen. Afterward, it should look kinda like a painting, like this

Now, go to Filters -> Distorts -> Kaleidoscope and set the mirrors to the maximum number (24), slide the zoom down, and slide the Center Y slider around until you get something you like. I settled on this

Now, do the the Kaleidoscope filtering again, sliding around the sliders until you get something you like. Here's what my second pass of kaleidscoping got me

Now go to the Colors menu and play around with Hue & Saturation, Brightness & Contrast, Invert, and whatever other color filters you are into. I settled on this

That's how you can make mandalas with fewer than a dozen steps in GIMP. I typically use some of the more advanced options under Filters to get different effects, you can experiment with different things if you're feeling adventurous. The Cartoon filter will put black borders around areas of the same color. Adding Noise in the first step can add more colors if you're starting with a relatively gray image.

Is that the inside of a covid-19?

Good one Joe

Create a seed from the image by reading binary raw format data of the generated image(randomly pick some bytes) and generate random numbers for next drawings for same game/others. Try using some seed fed random generators like Mersenne Twister or other congruential generators.

We will get some random combinations to play.

Could be!

Great minds think alike! A while back I wrote a program to generate pseudo-random numbers from binary file data in a deterministic way. Maybe later I'll input some mandalas.

The combinations or numbers generated would be unique and you will have a story to tell if you won with those numbers.

If you make a mandala out of a pic of your losing ticket and meditate on it, will the winning numbers come to you? I dig it.

Doesn't Gimp also have a filter for turning images into mandelbrot fractals? I'm keen on fractals.

There should be some plug-in to turn images into Mandelbrot in 1 step.

Good Luck digging those fractals...

Just for you, DB. Fractals would have been a more mathematical topic, in retrospect.

In GIMP, fractals are under Filters -> Map -> Fractal Trace, and from there you can choose either Mandelbrot or Julia. To make this fractal, I started with the same low-res image of Stat$talker's ticket, first added a bit of random RGB noise, then scaled it to 3000x3000. Then I did Oilify, then Mandelbrot with depth=3, then Julia with depth=1, then Mean Blur, and finally some color adjustment.

You can combine the two effects. This one was done by first making a mandala with 13-fold symmetry, then applying Mandelbrot with depth=2, then Juila with depth=2. And the usual color adjustments.