Image → pixel art, entirely in your browser
Pixel Art Converter
Turn a photo, illustration, or logo into a deliberate pixel-art grid. Start with a clear sample or upload your own image, tune the palette, and compare every change before exporting.
Live converter
Build a clear pixel-art draft
Loading sample…
Move the comparison slider to reveal the source, or use the 50/50 button below. This is a side-by-side reveal, not an opacity blend.
Read this conversion
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- Palette & texture
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- Transparent cells
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Choose clean PNG for artwork, grid PNG to inspect cells, or PDF for a printable coordinate chart.
Refine individual pixels
Turn on Edit pixels, choose a tool and color, then tap or drag on the result. Focus the canvas: arrow keys move, Space acts, B/E/F/I select brush, erase, fill, or pick.
Turn on editing to adjust the converted grid before export.
Actual palette
Colors used in this conversion, with cell counts.
Keep the important shapes, then reduce the rest
For a photo to pixel art result, use Frame & clean source to crop toward the subject after uploading. A smaller grid works best when the silhouette and contrast carry the idea; increase the width only when the extra pixels protect a meaningful feature.
Use Nearest for logos and crisp illustration edges. Use Average when a photo needs broader color blocks. A color limit is a design decision: fewer colors simplify the image, while a larger palette preserves more shading.
- Set width first. It establishes how much visual information can survive.
- Lower colors deliberately. Check the visible palette and counts, not just the requested limit.
- Inspect and edit. Compare the shape, then paint individual cells if an important edge needs repair.
- Export the right view. Use clean PNG for artwork, grid PNG to inspect cells, or the PDF chart for coordinates and color counts.
What changes when you adjust a setting?
Grid width sets the horizontal cell count; height follows the source aspect ratio. Try 32 for bold shapes, then increase it only if an important edge disappears. Color limit is a maximum, not a promise of that many colors: a fixed Game Boy palette can never use more than its four available colors.
Auto palette takes colors from this image. PICO-8, Game Boy and 1-bit constrain the result to a fixed look. Off keeps flat regions; Floyd–Steinberg spreads quantization error for smoother tonal transitions; Atkinson spreads less error for a crisper texture. Sierra smooths gradients across a wider neighborhood; Stucki uses a broad, soft spread; Burkes balances that spread within two rows. The optional brightness, contrast and saturation controls change the sampled source before palette reduction. Crop selects an exact source-preview rectangle before conversion; edge cleanup can make similarly colored border-connected pixels transparent, but it is not AI subject segmentation.
The comparison slider reveals the original next to the converted result, so you can inspect shape rather than trusting an export filename. Editing supports brush, erase, connected-area fill, color pick, custom palette colors, and replace-all; changing conversion settings rebuilds the draft and resets manual edits. The clean PNG keeps only artwork pixels; grid PNG enlarges cells for inspection; the PDF adds coordinates and an actual-color legend. Source transparency can be kept or filled white. Edge cleanup can clear a chosen border-connected background color, but it does not automatically identify a subject or remove every photo background.