Create a jigsaw puzzle from a photograph
My three children, all boys, are in a puzzle building phase now. As the oldest is in first grade, the
complexity of puzzles that they undertake is limited. It can be tough to find interesting 25-piece or
50-piece puzzles. One day while helping my middle son work on a large Melissa & Doug undersea puzzle
that we have, it occurred to me that I might be able to automatically generate puzzles.
After a little bit of work, I came up with this web application. Basically, it creates a PDF
document with two puzzle pieces per page. The pieces are large enough so that they can be cut out
with an x-acto knife and if printed on card-stock make an adequate puzzle.
Currently the app works by randomly applying a curve to each side of a puzzle piece. Presently,
there's only one shape. However, if time and interest permit, I may enhance the application to
include a variety of shapes.